UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT    LOS  ANGELES 


THE  GIFT  OF 

MAY  TREAT  MORRISON 

IN  MEMORY  OF 

ALEXANDER  F  MORRISON 


THE  WRECK 


N> 


THE  WRECK 

An  Historical  and  a  Critical  Study 
of  the  Administrations  of  Theodore 
Roosevelt  and  of  William  Howard  Toft 


BY 


HENRY  CLAY  HANSBROUGH 

E 


NEW  YORK 

THE  NEALE  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 
1913 


Copyright,   1913,  by 
THE   NEALE   PUBLISHING  COMPANY 


One  of  the  Seven  was  wont  to  say  that  laws  were  like  cob- 
webs; where  the  small  flies  were  caught,  and  the  great  break 
through. 

— Bacon 


Oh,  for  a  forty-parson  power  to  chant 
Thy  praise,  Hypocrisy!     Oh,  for  a  hymn 

Loud  as  the  virtues  thou  dost  loudly  vaunt, 
Not  practice. 

— Byron 


Sire,  it  is  worse  than  a  crime,  it  is  a  blunder. 

—Joseph  FoucM 


432544 


PREFACE 

WE  plume  ourselves  upon  our  rapid 
advance  in  Civilization;  and  yet 
no  people  ever  retrograded  po- 
litically as  the  American  nation  is  retro- 
grading at  this  moment.  In  the  name  of 
Progress  we  are  going  back  to  Barbarism. 
I  have  reference  to  what  must  certainly  fol- 
low when  we  have  reached  the  limit  in  our 
present  spasmodic  spell  of  Wild-eyed  Poli- 
tics, if  limit  there  be. 

During  the  past  dozen  years  politicians 
of  all  parties,  each  trying  to  outdo  the  other 
in  proposals  of  a  radical  nature,  have  plied 
the  arts  of  the  Demagog  with  such  success 
as  completely  to  overthrow  our  earlier  sys- 
tem of  Government,  and  the  cry  is  for  still 
further  achievements  in  irrational  schemes 
of  legislation. 

The  fatuous  thing  known  as  "Pure  De- 
7 


PEEFACE 

mocracy,"  which  always  works  its  own  de- 
struction, is  now  gripping  the  Eepublic  to  its 
death.  In  the  end  it  will  prove  to  be  the 
handmaiden  of  devouring  monopoly,  that 
other  deleterious  force  now  all  controlling 
in  the  country's  business  affairs. 

In  The  Wreck  I  have  aimed  to  explain 
how  it  all  came  about,  and  to  describe  the 
methods  of  the  leaders  who  are  responsible 
for  the  catastrophe. 

H.  C.  H. 
WASHINGTON,  D.  C. 

August  1,  1913. 


CONTENTS 

PART  I 

PAGE 

THE  RISE  OF  RADICALISM 11 

RIPENING  OF  THE  TRUST 23 

ROOSEVELT  IN  THE  SADDLE 42 

MONOPOLY'S   RAPID   PACE 70 

THE  MORAL  EFFECT 86 

THE   POLITICAL   RESULTS 95 

PART  II 

FOUR  YEARS  OF  TAFT 115 

SOME    TARIFF    BUNGLING 135 

MORE  BAD  POLITICS 161 

TAFT  AND  THE  TRUSTS 165 

MR.  WILSON  AND  His  PARTY .174 


PART  I 
THE  RISE  OF  RADICALISM 


THE  WRECK 

PART  I 
THE  RISE  OF  RADICALISM 

WHEN  in  1901  Theodore  Roosevelt 
came  into  power,  almost  imme- 
diately two  great  dangers  con- 
fronted the  Republic, — first,  the  supremacy 
of  Monopoly;  and,  second,  a  condition  of 
endless  Political  Pandemonium.  Both  have 
come  to  pass.  Under  his  fostering  care 
they  arrived  quite  promptly.  The  length 
of  their  stay  depends  entirely  upon  the  time 
that  will  be  required  for  the  people  to  re- 
cover from  the  state  of  mental  intoxication 
in  which  Roosevelt  left  them  at  the  end  of 
his  despotic  rule. 

The  term  "came  into  power"  is  fittingly 
11 


THE  WRECK 

used,  for  Roosevelt/was^  the  whole  Govern- 
ment, through  ,m.ef]iqds'  which  he  at  once 
proceeded- rto  •  «i&optj-^nTj5tho^s  unlike  any 
the  country  had  known  before.  His  acces- 
sion to  the  Presidency  was  in  consequence 
of  a  most  regrettable  tragedy,  the  first  of  a 
series  of  violent  shocks  which  continued  to 
the  close  of  his  demoralizing  reign. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  political 
excesses  he  brought  about  are  the  natural 
concomitant  of  the  other  forbidding  thing, 
— the  triumph  of  monopoly.  The  theory 
upon  which  this  statement  rests  is  thus  ex- 
plained by  Guizot: 

"The  sovereignty  of  the  people  is  a  great  force  which  some- 
times interferes  to  break  up  an  inequality  which  has  become 
excessive,  or  a  power  which  has  become  absolute,  when  so- 
ciety can  no  longer  accommodate  itself  to  them;  as  despotism 
sometimes  interferes,  in  the  name  of  order,  violently  to  re- 
store a  society  on  the  brink  of  dissolution.  It  is  only  a 
weapon  of  attack  and  destruction,  never  an  instrument  for  the 
foundation  of  liberty.  It  is  not  a  principle  of  government, 
it  is  a  terrible  but  transient  dictatorship,  exercised  by  the 
multitude, — a  dictatorship  that  ceases,  and  that  ought  to 
cease  as  soon  as  the  multitude  has  accomplished  its  work  of 
destruction." 


12 


THE  RISE  OF  RADICALISM 

As  has  been  suggested,  the  tragic  death  of 
William  McKinley  marked  a  change  in 
American  politics  of  far-reaching  conse- 
quences. It  was  a  change  which  together 
with  its  results  the  present  historian  feels 
quite  free  to  discuss,  even  at  the  risk  of  re- 
flecting somewhat  upon  the  party  to  whose 
principles,  so  often  misapplied,  he  still  ad- 
heres. 

Assuming  the  task  with  malice  toward 
none,  but  rather  with  sympathy  for  those 
who,  being  human,  have  made  their  human 
mistakes,  he  is  aware  nevertheless  that  who- 
ever writes  truthfully  of  some  remarkable 
events  of  the  Twentieth  Century's  first  dec- 
ade will  not  escape  the  accusation  of  per- 
sonal bias. 

To  do  even  partial  justice  to  the  subject, 
one  must  have  been  a  part  of  the  intricate 
and  greatly  misunderstood  governmental 
machinery  at  Washington,  and  to  have 
known  somewhat  intimately  the  statesmen 
of  the  times. 

The  turning  point  in  the  larger  politics 
13 


THE  WRECK 

of  the  nation  dates  back  to  the  Philadelphia 
convention  of  1900,  when  McKinley  and 
Roosevelt  were  nominated  as  the  Repub- 
lican candidates. 

It  is  claimed  by  some  that  the  radical 
movement  began  with  the  appearance  of 
Bryan  as  the  leader  of  his  party  in  1896, 
but  until  recently  the  Democrats  have  had 
but  little  to  do  with  federal  affairs  within 
the  past  sixteen  years. 

And  as  for  radicalism  and  its  strange 
freaks  the  Republicans  have  been  giving 
Bryan  and  his  followers  a  few  exhibitions 
well  calculated  to  make  the  former  advo- 
cates of  free  and  unlimited  coinage  of  silver 
slink  away  in  confusion.  By  comparison  it 
has  been  the  difference  between  a  primer 
lesson  and  a  college  course. 

Events  of  a  thrilling  nature  followed 
rapidly  the  making  of  the  Republican  ticket 
in  the  Quaker  city.  It  is  matter  of  common 
knowledge  that  Senators  Mark  Hanna  and 
Thomas  C.  Platt  were  the  dominant  figures 
in  the  management  of  that  convention. 
14 


THE  RISE  OF  RADICALISM 

They  belonged  to  the  same  wing  of  the 
party, — the  Stalwart  wing;  yet  they  dis- 
agreed widely  in  regard  to  the  complete 
ticket.  Platt  favored  Roosevelt  for  the 
vice-presidency;  Hanna  was  bitterly  op- 
posed to  him.  For  a  time  there  was  every 
prospect  of  a  permanent  rupture  between 
the  two  recognized  leaders,  and  much  mid- 
night electricity  was  consumed  before  peace 
was  declared. 

In  the  matter  of  the  party  platform 
Hanna  and  Platt  were  in  close  accord,  and 
in  this  regard  the  delegates,  for  the  most 
part,  were  of  the  same  mind;  for  that  was 
before  the  day  of  serious  perplexities  in  the 
matter  of  party  policy.  Insurgency  was 
then  only  in  the  bud.  Leastwise  it  had  not 
yet  ripened  into  a  formidable  force. 

It  is  quite  generally  believed  that  Platt 
demanded  the  nomination  of  Roosevelt  for 
second  place  on  the  ticket  in  order  to  get  rid 
of  him  as  governor  of  New  York,  to  which 
place  he  would  have  been  renominated  but 
for  the  final  action  taken  at  the  Phila- 
15 


THE  WRECK 

delphia  gathering.  This  belief,  however,  is 
not  well  founded. 

Platt  was  a  man  who  had  had  experience 
in  politics,  both  national  and  state.  He  was 
a  pastmaster  in  the  game  long  before  Hanna 
took  his  first  local  lessons  in  Ohio. 

Hanna 's  success  in  nominating  McKinley 
at  St.  Louis  in  1896,  when  the  country 
seemed  ripe  for  "a  change"  and  the  way  to 
Republican  victory  was  easy,  had  made  him 
boldly  aggressive  and  somewhat  dictatorial. 
If  a  thing  did  not  suit  Hanna  personally, 
then  it  wasn't  good  for  the  country.  He 
wanted  McKinley  for  a  second  term  above 
everything  else.  Platt  was  not  opposed  to 
McKinley,  although  Hanna  suspected  that 
he  was.  The  thing  that  was  troubling  Platt 
was  that  he  scented  the  danger  of  defeat. 
This  was  too  remote  a  possibility  to  impress 
Hanna.  Platt  entertained  such  fear  of 
McKinley 's  reelection  that  he  was  trying  in 
every  way  to  guard  against  mistakes. 

He  knew  then  what  so  many  of  us  have 
learned  since, — that  a  condition  of  pros- 
16 


THE  RISE  OF  RADICALISM 

perity,  even  the  semblance  of  it,  produces 
among  the  people  an  atmosphere  of  arro- 
gance. It  is  this  that  has  confounded  so 
many  politicians  who,  having  made  a  strug- 
gle in  behalf  of  a  season  of  good  times,  re- 
turned home  to  find  the  harvesters  planning 
to  "turn  the  rascals  out," — "the  rascals" 
always  meaning  the  majority  party. 

Only  four  years  before  when,  for  whatso- 
ever reason,  the  country  was  passing 
through  a  business  depression  and  the  Re- 
publicans, having  become  unusually  numer- 
ous, were  clamoring  for  a  return  to  power, 
the  people  appeared  to  be  in  a  very  humble 
mood.  Now,  however,  after  a  period  of  ap- 
parent fatness  to  the  discerning  eye  the  vast 
electorate  seemed  to  be  upon  the  verge  of 
revolt. 

It  was  the  tendency  toward  powerful  busi- 
ness combinations, — that  is,  railroad  and 
industrial  consolidations, — and  not  the 
"natural  perversity  of  man"  that  made  the 
people  irritable,  uneasy,  and  difficult  to 
please.  This  was  the  psychology  of  the  sit- 
17 


THE  WEECK 

nation,  and  no  one  was  quicker  to  feel  its 
influence  than  was  the  "easy  boss"  of  New 
York. 

Such  things,  however,  made  no  impres- 
sion upon  Mark  Hanna.  To  his  mind  the 
rapid  increase  and  growth  of  trusts  and 
combinations  was  positive  evidence  sustain- 
ing his  own  political  wisdom, — a  true  in- 
dication of  ideal  national  progress. 

A  very  considerable  number  of  the  dele- 
gates took  the  Platt  view  of  it;  they  were 
fresh  from  the  people  and  knew  what  the 
voters  were  talking  about.  Apprehensive 
of  party  defeat  they,  along  with  the  perspi- 
cacious Platt,  wanted  a  man  for  second 
place  who  would  add  strength  to  the  ticket. 

Not  that  they  questioned  the  ability  or 
the  Eepublicanism  of  McKinley,  or  were 
opposed  to  his  renomination  for  any  sub- 
stantial reason.  He  was  an  ideal  candidate 
from  many  points  of  view;  he  had  served 
the  country  and  his  party  well  and  faith- 
fully. 

Moreover,  he  was  the  kind  of  man  who 
18 


THE  RISE  OF  RADICALISM 

won  the  admiration  even  of  those  who  dis- 
agreed with  his  political  principles.  If  he 
was  afflicted  with  any  human  weakness  it 
was  that  he  had  no  enemies, — a  reversal  of 
the  adage  that  a  man  is  loved  for  the  ene- 
mies he  makes. 

As  he  himself  subsequently  said  to  Sena- 
tor Carter,  of  Montana:  "We  appear  to 
have  pleased  almost  everyone.  Our  prom- 
ises have  been  carried  out.  Peace  and 
plenty  have  returned  to  the  land ;  what  more 
can  we  do  ?  Strange  as  it  may  seem,  I  am 
oppressed  by  the  abundant  happiness  that 
has  come  to  the  country/' 

Two  weeks  from  the  date  of  that  utter- 
ance he  was  shot  down  at  Buffalo. 

The  pressure  upon  Senator  Hanna  was 
so  great  that  he  was  compelled  to  yield ;  not, 
however,  until  Senator  Platt  had  given  him 
such  positive  assurance  in  regard  to  Colonel 
Roosevelt  as  to  mollify  the  aggressiveness 
of  the  McKinley  manager.  The  final  scene 
between  the  two  great  party  leaders  re- 
mains a  memorable  one. 
19 


THE  WRECK 

"Tom,  you  are  an  old  fool,"  roared 
Hanna  when  Platt,  having  been  sent  for 
late  in  the  night,  came  into  the  Ohio  sena- 
tor's room. 

"I  know  it,  Mark,"  replied  Platt  in  his 
quiet  way;  "but  when  you're  as  old  as  I 
am  you'll  not  be  as  much  of  a  boy  as  you 
are  now." 

"That  cowboy  will  ruin  the  country," 
continued  Hanna.  "Nothing  can  keep  him 
out  of  the  White  House  four  years  from 
now.  Is  that  your  game,  for  the  Lord's 
sake?" 

"Not  for  the  Lord's  sake,  Mark,"  replied 
Platt. 

"I  should  hope  not." 

"But  for  the  party's  sake.  Military 
heroes  have  always  been  popular,  you 
know."  And  the  New  Yorker  smiled 
faintly. 

"Military  hero!"  exclaimed  Hanna. 
"You  are  as  crazy  as  he  is,  more  so,  I  guess, 
for  you're  old  enough  to  know  better." 

"But  less  dangerous,  you  think?  Now, 
20 


THE  RISE  OF  RADICALISM 

Mark,  I  know  him  better  than  you  do. 
He's  not  at  all  dangerous." 

The  two  leaders  looked  at  each  other. 
Their  silence  was  akin  to  an  explosion 
of  eloquence.  After  a  significant  pause 
Hanna  asked: 

"Do  you  guarantee  him,  Tom?" 

"I'm  not  in  the  guarantee  business, 
Mark,  but  I  repeat  what  I  said, — that  he  is 
not  dangerous." 

There  was  another  pause,  during  which 
Platt's  guarded  guarantee  seemed  to  pene- 
trate Hanna 's  subconsciousness. 

"Well,"  remarked  Hanna,  "have  your 
own  way;  you'd  better  go  to  bed." 

This  brief  conversation,  the  climax  to  an 
intense  struggle  running  through  the  two 
previous  days  and  nights,  took  place  at  two 
o'clock  of  the  morning  of  the  convention; 
and  a  few  hours  later  Theodore  Roosevelt 
was  nominated  as  the  vice-presidential  can- 
didate without  opposition. 

Both  elements  in  the  party  had  been  sat- 
isfied,— the  conservatives  with  McKinley 
21 


THE  WRECK 

and  the  radicals  with  Roosevelt.  In  the 
language  of  a  western  delegate  who  had 
been  a  member  of  a  Rough  Rider  regiment, 
the  campaign  would  "have  some  ginger  in 
it"  and  the  trusts  would  "have  to  sit  up  and 
take  notice." 

Such  was  the  confidence  of  the  Roosevelt 
following  thirteen  years  ago.  There  was 
no  lack  of  "ginger"  in  the  campaign. 


22 


RIPENING  OF  THE  TRUST 

THOMAS    COLLIER    PLATT    was 
peculiarly  a  political  genius.    His 
knowledge  of  men,  which  was  ex- 
ceedingly good,  was  no  greater  than  his 
knowledge  in  regard  to  what  was  required 
to  hold  "the  organization"  together  and  re- 
new the  life  of  the  party  as  conditions 
arose. 

If  he  had  what  in  political  parlance  is 
known  as  the  "fine  Italian  hand,"  it  was 
supported  by  a  keen  mind  and  a  far-seeing 
eye.  He  knew  instinctively  what  the 
people  wanted,  and  had  been  known  to  in- 
dulge in  warning  lectures  to  those  of  his 
colleagues  who  were  somewhat  lacking  in 
regard  for  public  opinion.  It  was  this  that 
gave  him  his  superior  grasp  of  national 
politics  and  made  him  the  "easy  boss"  in 
New  York. 

23 


THE  WEECK 

Where  Mark  Hanna's  control  reached  the 
point  of  sheer  force  and  at  times  was  almost 
brutal,  Tom  Platt  prevailed  by  the  exercise 
of  persuasive  reason.  In  his  dealings  with 
party  leaders  it  was  his  custom  to  ask  them 
what  they  wanted  in  the  way  of  recogni- 
tion. After  that  he  would  quietly  request 
them  to  indicate  what  they  really  expected 
to  get,  pointing  out  the  danger  there  might 
be  in  demanding  too  much. 

If  the  delegate  or  state  leader  was  not 
satisfied  with  this  and  went  to  Hanna  with 
his  troubles,  without  the  least  bit  of  cere- 
mony he  would  be  told  very  positively  and 
conclusively  what  he  could  or  could  not 
have. 

At  Philadelphia  a  large  number  of  the 
delegates  favored  Roosevelt,  as  did  Senator 
Platt,  because,  on  account  of  the  part  he 
had  taken  in  the  Cuban  campaign,  he  filled 
the  popular  eye  as  a  hero.  It  has  almost 
always  turned  out  that  the  party  which  rec- 
ognizes the  war  hero  is  sure  of  success  at 
the  polls. 

24 


RIPENING  OF  THE  TRUST 

Roosevelt  was  a  delegate  in  the  conven- 
tion and  his  enthusiastic  admirers  besieged 
him  with  requests  to  permit  the  use  of  his 
name  on  the  ticket.  Not  a  few  of  his 
friends  went  so  far  as  to  insist  that  he 
should  be  at  the  head  of  it. 

Indeed,  as  the  milling  and  mixing  of  del- 
egates proceeded,  Hanna  demanding  and 
Platt  advising  and  conciliating,  sentiment 
swung  seriously  to  Roosevelt  for  first  posi- 
tion. The  movement  gained  such  momen- 
tum that  not  only  were  the  McKinley  forces 
greatly  disturbed,  but,  in  the  party's  inter- 
est, the  Colonel's  more  cautious  friends 
found  it  necessary  to  detain  him  in  his  pri- 
vate room  during  the  evening  preceding  the 
meeting  of  the  convention,  for  whenever  he 
showed  himself  the  crowd  seemed  to  loose 
its  equilibrium.  Of  course  it  would  have 
been  a  serious  party  mistake  to  have  nomi- 
nated him  in  place  of  McKinley. 

Inadvertently,  no  doubt,  Roosevelt  had 
come  to  the  great  Republican  meeting  wear- 
ing a  slouch  hat.  This  was  an  innovation, 
25 


THE  WRECK 

for  New  York  always  appears  at  the  big 
party  shows  topped  in  shining  silk  beavers. 
Had  the  Colonel  worn  an  old  khaki  uniform 
on  this  occasion  there  is  no  knowing  what 
might  have  happened.  There  were  those  in 
Philadelphia  willing  to  make  oath  that  the 
Roosevelt  chapeau,  carelessly  tilted  so  as  to 
shade  his  bronzed  face,  had  seen  service  at 
San  Juan  Hill. 

It  is  difficult  to  measure  the  flood  of 
volatile  emotions  that  go  to  make  up  a  rad- 
ical movement  in  politics,  or  to  locate  its 
source.  No  one  doubts  the  fact,  however, 
that  the  superimaginative  citizen  has  never 
failed  to  find  in  Theodore  Roosevelt  all  the 
elements  to  stir  the  crusader.  In  this  in- 
stance even  the  Colonel's  old  hat  served  to 
arouse  the  mercurial  multitude. 

Still,  the  feeling  that  the  Republican 
cause,  to  insure  success,  needed  to  be 
strengthened  at  a  point  where  weakness 
was  already  apparent  was  much  deeper  than 
even  the  astutest  leaders  of  that  day  sup- 
posed it  to  be. 

26 


EIPENING  OF  THE  TRUST 

True,  the  party's  promises,  as  said  by 
McKinley,  had  been  carried  out,  and  peace 
and  plenty,  or  what  passed  for  it,  had  re- 
turned to  the  land;  yet  there  were  accumu- 
lating evidences  of  disquietude  which  boded 
no  good  for  future  solidarity. 

The  rapid  growth  of  monopoly  in  the 
leading  lines  of  business,  the  certainty  of  its 
spread  to  all  other  lines,  and  its  ultimate 
triumph  over  healthy  competitive  forces 
was  the  disturbing  factor. 

The  gentle  McKinley,  champion  of  the 
doctrine  of  protection,  sincerely  believed 
that  complete  happiness  among  the  people 
would  surely  follow  the  permanent  estab- 
lishment of  this  American  fiscal  policy,  and 
that  all  else  would  be  adjusted  to  harmonize 
with  it. 

Having  assisted  in  an  advisory  way  in 
framing  the  anti-trust  statute,  he  had  the 
utmost  confidence  in  its  efficacy  as  a  cor- 
rective. Being  a  just  man,  he  believed  in 
its  enforcement.  He  could  see  no  differ- 
ence between  the  big  criminal  and  the  little 
27 


THE  WRECK 

one;  they  were  equal  under  the  law.  Such 
was  his  abiding  faith  in  the  character  of 
our  institutions. 

Looking  back  to  that  period,  it  is  im- 
possible to  realize  that  in  the  face  of  solemn 
restraining  statutes  the  thing  now  known  as 
"Big  Business/' — then  the  mere  germ  of 
monopoly, — would  ever  be  permitted  to 
reach  its  present  proportions  as  a  control- 
ling force  in  the  affairs  of  the  country.  It 
was  inconceivable  that  the  mighty  hand  of 
the  Government  should  fall  as  if  paralyzed ; 
or  worse,  that  it  should  be  used  to  protect 
those  who  spurned  the  law. 

When  McKmley  came  to  the  Presidency 
in  1897  all  industry  was  at  low  tide. 
Armies  of  unemployed  men  had  been 
tramping  the  highways  demanding  the  op- 
portunity to  work.  It  was  no  time  for  fine 
distinctions  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  anti- 
trust law,  then  only  in  the  seventh  year  of 
its  uncertainty.  The  shops  must  be  opened 
and  the  wheels  of  commerce  set  in  motion. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  there  were  no 
28 


RIPENING  OF  THE  TRUST 

''trusts"  in  the  sense  that  they  now  exist. 
There  was  no  business  to  be  monopolized. 
Failures  and  receiverships  were  having 
their  innings,  and  Democratic  statesmen 
were  explaining  that  these  conditions  had 
come  about  in  consequence  of  the  sudden 
change  from  artificial  to  natural  laws. 

While  political  economists  may  never 
agree  as  to  the  fundamental  cause,  the 
Democratic  theory  was  not  without  plausi- 
bility. Nor  did  it  deter  Republicans  at  the 
end  of  McKinley's  first  term  from  pointing 
with  pride  to  the  beneficent  results  of  their 
policies.  Business  had  revived  to  an  un- 
precedented degree,  and  the  hungry  hordes 
did  not  stop  to  inquire  into  the  ethics  of  it. 

Old  mills  were  in  operation  again  and 
new  ones  were  being  built.  There  was  a 
demand  for  labor  and  an  active  market  for 
commodities.  This  was  the  appearance  of 
happiness  that  McKinley  spoke  of  as  he  was 
leaving  his  home  at  Canton  to  attend  the 
Buffalo  exposition  in  September,  1901. 
The  Democratic  answer  was  that  business 
29 


THE  WRECK 

could  not  remain  always  dormant,  and  that 
we  should  soon  see  the  consequences  of  Re- 
publican artifice. 

As  this  is  being  written  Congress  is  con- 
vening in  extra  session  for  the  fifth  time  in 
nineteen  years  for  the  purpose  of  revising 
the  tariff.  Are  we  at  last  to  have  done  with 
this  troublesome  question?  We  shall  see. 
However,  as  the  two  old  parties  appear  to 
be  as  wide  apart  as  ever  in  the  matter  of 
policy,  the  prospect  is  not  at  all  promising. 

It  has  been  proposed,  in  order  to  avoid 
these  frequent  revisions,  that  a  permanent 
tariff  commission  be  created,  and  that  this 
superconstitutional  body  shall  change  the 
rates  of  duty  from  time  to  time  as  condi- 
tions may  require.  The  danger  here  is  that 
the  country  might  have  a  repetition  of  the 
experience  it  has  had  with  the  Bureau  of 
Corporations,  which  was  created  to  gather 
information  in  regard  to  the  trusts  and  in 
a  very  short  time  became  the  protector  of 
such  trusts  as  were  agreeable  to  it  and  its 
master. 

30 


RIPENING  OF  THE  TRUST 

With  the  great  revival  of  business,  be- 
ginning with  the  first  McKinley  administra- 
tion, came  also  increased  activity  on  the 
part  of  capital.  As  yet  there  had  seemed 
to  be  no  necessity  for  resorting  to  the  Sher- 
man law  to  prevent  industrial  and  other 
combinations. 

Although  it  was  the  product  of  a  Repub- 
lican administration  designed  to  prohibit 
monopoly  by  direct  statute,  the  Philadel- 
phia convention  of  1900  did  not  even  refer 
to  the  anti-trust  statute,  but  contented  itself 
with  declaring  anew  against  "all  conspira- 
cies and  combinations  intended  to  restrict 
business,  to  create  monopolies,  to  limit  pro- 
duction, or  to  control  prices."  It  went 
further  and  favored  "such  legislation  as  will 
effectively  restrain  and  prevent  such  abuses, 
and  protect  and  promote  competition," — 
as  if  the  anti-trust  law  were  not  in  exist- 
ence! 

In  this  respect  the  party  was  not  entirely 
true  to  itself.  How  much  better  had  the 
convention  "pointed  with  pride"  here  and 
31 


THE  WRECK 

pledged  itself  to  the  enforcement  of  exist- 
ing law.  Can  it  be  that  designing  men  were 
already  enlisted  in  their  work  of  nullifica- 
tion? The  author  of  these  pages  has  no 
doubt  whatever  that  such  was  the  case. 

As  has  been  said,  there  was  a  feeling  of 
unrest,  of  apprehension.  The  Steel  trust, 
the  monopoly  in  farm  machinery,  and  many 
other  combinations  had  not  been  organized. 
The  era  of  " moralized  competition"  re- 
cently referred  to  by  a  prominent  attorney 
for  the  trusts, — in  contradistinction  to 
monopolized  competition,  no  doubt, — had 
not  yet  arrived. 

The  fact  that  it  was  near  at  hand,  how- 
ever, impressed  itself  upon  many  of  the 
delegates,  who,  though  they  had  every  con- 
fidence in  McKinley's  honesty  and  patriotic 
sturdiness,  could  see  that  the  country  was 
facing  a  problem  of  much  greater  import 
than  the  one  with  which  the  party  had  al- 
ready successfully  dealt, — that  is,  the  mere 
restoration  of  active  business  and  the  dis- 
persion of  the  Coxey  army. 
32 


RIPENING  OF  THE  TRUST 

In  the  interest  of  accuracy  it  must  be  said 
that  they  were  impressed,  too,  with  a  feel- 
ing that,  in  view  of  his  surroundings  and 
his  support  by  certain  selfish  interests,  there 
was  very  grave  doubt  in  regard  to  McKin- 
ley's  ability  to  deal  with  this  new  problem; 
and  it  was  believed  that  a  stronger  hand 
than  his  would  be  required  to  cope  with  the 
aggressive  men  who  were  now  preparing  to 
seize  upon  the  country's  reviving  industries 
and  convert  them  to  personal  and  corporate 
ends. 

To  those  who  really  knew  McKinley  these 
apprehensions  were  groundless.  There  has 
never  been  any  substantial  doubt  in  regard 
to  his  purpose  to  have  the  law  enforced,  for 
he  was  a  man  of  integrity,  and  held  his  oath 
of  office  to  be  the  chart  of  his  conduct. 

With  these  doubts  in  their  minds  and 
with  the  record  and  the  professions  of 
Colonel  Roosevelt  before  them,  to  whom 
other  than  he  could  the  delegates  turn  for 
safe  leadership  for  the  future?  No  great 
public  problem  has  ever  arisen  that  the  man 
33 


THE  WRECK 

did  not  appear,  or  seem  to  appear,  to  solve 
it.  In  this  instance  there  could  be  no  mis- 
take :  Roosevelt  was  the  man  of  the  hour, — 
the  one  to  carry  the  party  banner  through 
the  close  and  doubtful  states  as  an  offset 
to  the  equally  intrepid,  not  to  say  impetuous, 
Bryan. 

Besides,  it  would  put  him  in  line  as  Mc- 
Kinley  's  successor, — the  thing  above  all  else 
that  Hanna  had  feared  until  he  was  reas- 
sured by  Platt  that  Roosevelt  was  not  dan- 
gerous. The  feeling  among  the  so-called 
radicals  that  they  must  have  some  one  upon 
whom  to  lean  and  who  stood  firmly  for  what 
they  believed  in  was  very  genuine.  Not  one 
of  them  could  have  given  an  entirely  satis- 
factory reason  at  that  time  for  his  appre- 
hensions. They  only  knew  that  the  condi- 
tions were  ominous,  that  all  signs  presaged 
darker  days  for  the  Republic. 

"With  the  exception  of  Senator  Hanna 
and  his  immediate  circle  of  conservatives  no 
one  had  any  doubt  about  Roosevelt's  abso- 
lute sincerity.  The  people  had  been  read- 
34 


RIPENING  OF  THE  TRUST 

ing  his  books  and  speeches,  and  had  found 
them  good, — replete  with  wholesome  advice, 
bristling  with  patriotic  thoughts,  although 
some  close  observers  declared  that  he  was 
somewhat  preachy.  He  was  fresh  from  the 
field  of  battle,  out  of  whose  hardships  love 
of  country  usually  finds  its  inspiration. 
The  newspapers  were  recounting  many  in- 
stances of  his  valor.  He  was  young  in 
body  and  vigorous  of  mind,  and  his  strong 
Americanism  and  pronounced  ideas  in  re- 
gard to  official  integrity  and  civic  virtue 
sent  a  thrill  to  the  hearts  of  the  hopeful. 
It  was  expressions  like  these  from  his  book 
"The  Strenuous  Life"  (1899)  that  drew 
men  to  him : 

"Our  standard  of  public  and  private  conduct  will  never  be 
raised  to  the  proper  level  until  we  make  the  scoundrel  who 
succeeds  feel  the  weight  of  a  hostile  public  opinion  even  more 
strongly  than  the  scoundrel  who  fails." 

These  were  strong  words.  To  put  them 
into  force  and  effect  required  the  deter- 
mined efforts  of  a  strong  man.  No  weak- 

35 


THE  WEECK 

ling  could  do  it.  Eoosevelt  was  not  a  weak- 
ling. What  he  appears  to  have  had  in  his 
mind  was  hinted  at  in  a  speech  delivered  at 
Galena,  April,  1900,  shortly  before  the 
Philadelphia  convention.  The  occasion  was 
a  Grant  anniversary.  Among  other  things 
he  said: 

"The  Republic  cannot  stand  if  honesty  and  decency  do  not 
prevail  alike  in  public  and  private  life;  if  we  do  not  set  our- 
selves seriously  at  work  to  solve  the  tremendous  social  prob- 
lems forced  upon  us  by  the  far-reaching  social  changes  of  the 
last  two  generations." 

How  could  any  man  who  spoke  thus, 
being  sincere,  go  wrong?  Ten  years  later, 
in  his  address  delivered  at  the  Sorbonne  in 
Paris,  he  said: 

"My  position  in  regard  to  the  moneyed  interests  can  be  put 
in  a  few  words.  In  every  civilized  society  property  rights 
must  be  carefully  safeguarded;  ordinarily,  and  in  the  great 
majority  of  cases,  human  rights  and  property  rights  are 
fundamentally  and  in  the  long  run  identical;  but  when  it 
clearly  appears  that  there  is  a  real  conflict  between  them,  hu- 
man rights  must  have  the  upper  hand,  for  property  belongs 
to  man  and  not  man  to  property." 

Sentiments  as  old  as  government  itself, 
no  less  true  when  Thomas  Paine  uttered 
36 


RIPENING  OF  THE  TRUST 

them  than  they  were  in  the  more  material 
age  when  the  Steel  and  Harvester  monopo- 
lies, with  their  inflated  capitalization  and 
political  influence,  were  enjoying  the  pro- 
tection of  the  Roosevelt  administration, 
contrary  to  the  laws  of  the  country. 

It  is  conceded  that  McKinley  had  lived 
up  to  the  standard  of  public  expectation; 
that  he  had  been  the  successful  leader  of  his 
time.  The  problem  which  destiny  seemed 
to  have  created  Theodore  Roosevelt  to  solve 
was  a  new  one, — new,  at  least,  to  the  new 
century. 

True,  monopoly  as  an  institution  was  as 
old  as  civilization  itself.  Yet  at  no  time  in 
the  past,  not  even  in  the  middle  ages,  had  it 
ever  been  recognized  as  a  beneficent  thing. 
England  three  hundred  years  before  had 
not  permitted  it  to  reach  a  state  of  un- 
governableness,  but  had  punished  those 
who  engaged  in  it  by  confiscating  their 
property,  by  the  imprisonment  of  offenders, 
and  even  by  the  cutting  off  of  ears.  Upon 
the  forestallers  of  the  market  the  severest 
37 


132544 


THE  WRECK 

penalties  had  been  inflicted  and  the  culprits 
driven  from  the  places  of  bargain  and  trade. 

In  our  own  enlightened  time,  through  the 
indifference  or  worse  of  an  executive  given 
to  high-sounding  and  virtuous  phrase,  the 
monopolist  was  permitted  to  escape.  Con- 
gress had  provided  the  country  with  re- 
straining statutes, — a  national  challenge  to 
individual  and  collective  selfishness;  a  law 
with  a  soul,  or  at  least  with  teeth  and  in- 
testines. 

Although  a  quarter  of  a  century  has  gone 
by  since  it  was  framed,  it  has  stood  every 
test  of  judicial  interpretation.  If  it  has 
not  been  effectively  enforced  no  blame  at- 
taches to  the  lawmaking  body,  the  object  of 
Roosevelt's  cuttlefish  attacks.  Congress 
early  saw  its  duty  and  had  the  courage  and 
the  honesty  to  act. 

Lawyers, — those  whose  minds  are  not 
swayed  by  visions  of  large  fees, — will  ex- 
amine our  statute  books  and  fail  to  find  a 
piece  of  legislation  more  perfect  than  the 
Sherman  law.  Its  first  three  sections  are 
38 


RIPENING  OF  THE  TRUST 

peculiarly  suggestive  of  the  necessities  of 
the  occasion: 

Sec.  1.  Every  contract,  combination  in  the  form  of  trust 
or  otherwise,  or  conspiracy,  in  restraint  of  trade  or  com- 
merce among  the  several  States,  or  with  foreign  nations,  is 
hereby  declared  to  be  illegal.  Every  person  who  shall  make 
any  such  contract  or  engage  in  any  such  combination  or  con- 
spiracy, shall  be  deemed  guilty  of  a  misdemeanor,  and,  on  con- 
viction thereof,  shall  be  punished  by  fine  not  exceeding  five 
thousand  dollars,  or  by  imprisonment  not  exceeding  one  year, 
or  by  both  said  punishments,  in  the  discretion  of  the  court. 

Sec.  2.  Every  person  who  shall  monopolize,  or  attempt  to 
monopolize,  or  combine  or  conspire  with  any  other  person 
or  persons  to  monopolize  any  part  of  the  trade  or  commerce 
among  the  several  States,  or  with  foreign  nations,  shall  be 
deemed  guilty  of  a  misdemeanor,  and,  on  conviction  thereof 
shall  be  punished  by  fine  not  exceeding  five  thousand  dollars, 
or  by  imprisonment  not  exceeding  one  year,  or  by  both  said 
punishments,  in  the  discretion  of  the  court. 

Sec.  3.  Every  contract,  combination  in  form  of  trust  or 
otherwise,  or  conspiracy,  in  restraint  of  trade  or  commerce 
in  any  Territory  of  the  United  States  or  of  the  District  of 
Columbia,  or  in  restraint  of  trade  or  commerce  between  any 
such  Territory  and  another,  or  between  any  such  Territory 
or  Territories  and  any  State  or  States  or  the  District  of 
Columbia,  or  with  foreign  nations,  or  between  the  District  of 
Columbia  and  any  State  or  States  or  foreign  nations,  is  hereby 
declared  illegal.  Every  person  who  shall  make  any  such  con- 
tract or  engage  in  any  such  combination  or  conspiracy  shall 
be  deemed  guilty  of  a  misdemeanor,  and,  on  conviction  thereof, 
shall  be  punished  by  fine  not  exceeding  five  thousand  dollars, 


THE  WRECK 

or  by  imprisonment  not  exceeding  one  year,  or  by  both  said 
punishments,  in  the  discretion  of  the  court. 

Now  and  again  some  student  of  statecraft 
will  ask  why  it  was  that  the  jail  penalties 
were  made  so  light.  Mr.  Sherman,  who  in- 
troduced the  bill  in  the  Senate,  answered 
the  question.  He  told  an  inquiring  friend 
that  this  phase  of  the  matter  had  given  the 
framers  of  the  law, — Senators  Edmunds, 
Hoar,  George,  Ingalls,  and  himself, — much 
concern,  and  that  they  had  finally  agreed 
that  one  year's  imprisonment  would  be  a 
greater  punishment  to  the  man  capable  of 
organizing  or  conducting  a  monopoly  than 
twenty  years  would  be  to  the  ordinary  crim- 
inal; that  the  monopolist's  real  punishment 
would  begin  when  he  had  been  released 
from  jail  to  mingle  again  with  his  fellow- 
men.  It  was  believed  that  the  very  thought 
of  it  would  react  as  a  deterrent  to  all  such 
offenders. 

One  who  cares  to  pursue  the  subject  as  a 
psychological  study  may  do  well  to  search 
out  some  past  offender,  if  any  such  can  be 
40 


RIPENING  OF  THE  TRUST 

found,  and  examine  his  mind  on  the  sub- 
ject. No  doubt  the  result  would  make  an 
illuminating  chapter  in  politico-criminal 
literature. 

The  explanation  of  Mr.  Sherman  is  in- 
teresting in  that  it  illustrates  what  was  in 
the  minds  of  the  distinguished  men  who 
framed  the  important  statute  as  well  as  the 
intent  of  the  Congress  that  passed  it. 

No  one  who  knew  the  heart  of  William  Mc- 
Kinley  has  any  doubt  about  what  he  would 
have  done  had  he  lived.  Although  he  was 
slow  to  act,  he  had  a  profound  reverence  for 
the  laws  of  his  country.  It  is  known  that 
he  favored  the  criminal  provisions  of  the 
anti-trust  measure  and  appreciated  the  ne- 
cessity for  them. 


41 


EOOSEVELT  IN  THE  SADDLE 

THE  American  people  have  been  pe- 
culiarly fortunate  in  choosing  high- 
minded  and  level-headed  men  for  the 
great  office  of  President.    Mistakes  in  this 
regard  have  been   exceedingly  rare,   and, 
save  in  a  single  instance,  these  have  been 
discovered  and  corrected  before  permanent 
harm  had  been  accomplished. 

But  it  is  not  always  the  President  who 
shapes  the  policy  of  the  country.  Too 
often  it  has  been  some  shrewd  cabinet  min- 
ister or  other  trusted  official  who  at  the 
crucial  moment  gave  the  vital  matter  a  sin- 
ister turn. 

Some  one  has  said  that  if  permitted  to 
name  the  poet  to  write  the  nation's  songs  he 
would  have  little  care  concerning  its  politics. 
In  a  measure  this  sentiment  might  be  ap- 
plied to  certain  administrations. 
42 


ROOSEVELT  IN  THE  SADDLE 

There  are  great  interests  that  do  not 
trouble  themselves  about  who  is  President 
or  what  his  politics  is,  provided  they  may  be 
assured  beforehand  in  regard  to  the  man 
who  is  to  be  Attorney-General.  These 
same  interests  are  also  very  exacting  when 
it  comes  to  the  selection  of  a  Secretary  of 
the  Treasury.  The  first  executes  the  law, 
or  is  supposed  to  execute  it,  and  the  other 
handles  the  nation's  money,  or  permits  it  to 
be  handled.  Hence  the  anxiety  of  Wall 
Street  in  regard  to  matters  in  Washington. 

McKinley's  was  a  trustful  nature.  He 
was  not  disposed  to  be  suspicious  of  men's 
motives,  and  as  a  rule  accepted  their  word 
in  complete  confidence  that  it  would  be  kept. 
Nor  did  he  distrust  their  judgment  even 
when  it  did  not  entirely  agree  with  his  own. 

That  he  was  often  deceived  would  be  no 
more  than  might  be  expected.  The  one 
great  saving  clause  in  his  make-up,  how- 
ever, was  that  he  never  acted  hastily.  He 
proceeded  upon  the  theory  that  all  men 
make  mistakes;  that  none  of  us  is  in- 
43 


THE  WRECK 

fallible.  Thus,  in  the  end,  he  would  reach 
sound  conclusions. 

Another  admirable  quality  in  McKinley 
was  that  he  never  lectured  his  coadjutors, 
belittled  their  capacity,  nor  reflected  upon 
their  integrity.  He  believed  that  men's 
errors  would  find  them  out  and  be  corrected 
by  the  rule  of  self-reason.  He  was  not  a 
preacher,  but  rather  an  expounder  of  wise, 
well-considered  economic  doctrines  by 
which  the  ship  of  state,  as  he  gave  it  esti- 
mate, would  gain  safe  harbor. 

Roosevelt  came  to  the  Presidency  after 
McKinley 's  second  cabinet  had  been  named. 
It  was  generally  understood  that  he  would 
carry  out  the  policies  of  his  unfortunate 
predecessor  and  of  his  party.  The  country 
was  prosperous,  as  prosperity  has  been  ac- 
cepted. The  workingman's  dinner-pail, 
now  made  of  American  tin-plate,  was  full  to 
the  bulging  point.  What  more  had  he  to 
ask?  If  its  contents  were  costing  a  few 
cents  more  than  formerly,  was  he  not  re- 
ceiving greater  wages  than  had  been  paid 
44 


EOOSEVELT  IN  THE  SADDLE 

Mm  for  Ms  labor  four  years  back?  It  was 
an  unanswerable  argument  in  favor  of  Re- 
publican doctrine,  to  wMch  Eoosevelt  was 
pledged. 

Hence  it  was  pointed  out  that  Ms  task 
would  be  an  easy  one.  He  had  but  to  sit 
tight  where  McKinley  had  sat  and  permit 
the  people  to  go  on  thriving  as  before.  No 
matter  what  McKinley  himself  would  have 
done  to  check  the  combinations  of  capital, 
which  was  now  girding  its  loins  to  larger 
efforts,  if  the  new  President  would  but  stay 
the  " strong  hand"  and  permit  "big  busi- 
ness" to  develop  our  wonderful  resources  as 
only  big  business  could,  we  would  astomsh 
the  world  with  our  marvelous  progress. 

It  was  a  captivating  plea  in  behalf  of 
American  enterprise  and  continued  good 
times,  and,  by  the  instinctive  application  of 
persuasive  methods  so  familiar  to  the  cap- 
tains of  industry,  Roosevelt  had  been  im- 
pressed with  it  even  before  he  took  the  oath 
of  office  at  Buffalo.  By  the  time  he  arrived 
in  Washington  to  take  his  seat  in  the  White 
45 


THE  WEECK 

House  he  had  assured  Mr.  Root  of  his  com- 
plete acquiescence  in  the  project;  there 
would  be  no  change  in  policy,  no  radical 
recommendations,  nor  other  disturbing  acts 
hostile  to  "vested  rights" — that  is  to  say,  not 
against  those  engaged  in  "  honest  occupa- 
tions." 

Whether  Mr.  Root  remained  in  the  cab- 
inet merely  to  see  that  the  compact  was 
kept  is  only  incidental.  It  is  a  well  under- 
stood fact,  however,  that  he  wielded  a 
great  influence  over  the  new  President. 
Throughout  Roosevelt's  seven  and  a  half 
years  in  the  White  House  Mr.  Root  was 
near  him, — his  closest  adviser,  indeed. 

This  was  not  altogether  pleasing  to  those 
who  at  Philadelphia  had  insisted  upon  the 
recognition  of  the  hero  of  San  Juan  Hill. 
It  was  a  matter  of  common  knowledge  that 
for  years  Mr.  Root  had  been  the  legal  ad- 
viser of  large  interests  in  New  York;  and 
while  this  was  not  held  to  be  a  disqualifica- 
tion, a  bar  to  his  occupying  a  high  place  in 
the  Government,  somehow  the  feeling  so 
46 


ROOSEVELT  IN  THE  SADDLE 

long  prevalent  in  certain  sections  against 
the  political  dominance  of  Jersey  corpora- 
tions operated  to  make  Mr.  Root's  close  re- 
lations to  the  President  a  dubious  factor 
and  to  raise  some  doubt  about  the  abso- 
lute certainty  of  a  "square  deal"  at  the 
White  House. 

These  doubts  were  not  allayed  when,  as 
time  passed,  the  President  not  only  found 
no  fault  with  the  Steel  trust,  then  but  re- 
cently organized,  but  actually  received  as 
welcome  visitors  the  principal  men  who  had 
put  it  together.  The  effect  of  these  close 
relations  was  to  embolden  the  promoters  of 
monopoly  and  sadden  the  hearts  of  the 
Roosevelt  adherents,  who  had  persuaded 
themselves  that  if  the  anti-trust  law  was  to 
be  enforced  their  champion  was  the  man  to 
do  it.  They  looked  to  him  to  put  a  few  of  the 
greater  offenders  in  jail,  but  in  vain. 

The  murmurs  of  disappointment  were  not 

loud,  but  they  were  deep  and  significant. 

The   monopolists    and   their   sympathizers 

were  pleased,  of  course ;  but  they  restrained 

47 


THE  WRECK 

their  enthusiasm  while  they  increased  their 
activities. 

Here,  then,  was  the  beginning  of  the  pre- 
arranged campaign  for  the  overthrow  of 
the  potent  clauses  of  the  Sherman  law,  and 
it  also  marked  the  inevitable  disintegration 
of  the  Republican  party,  which  had  put  it 
on  the  statute  books.  The  process  was 
slow,  as  is  always  the  case  when  momentous 
ethical  revolutions  take  place,  and  yet  it  was 

most  effective. 

\ 

The  earlier  manifestations  of  the  party's 
dissolution  showed  themselves  in  the  form 
of  "insurgency"  so-called,  particularly  in 
the  western  states.  It  matters  very  little 
what  name  is  given  to  a  political  movement ; 
it  is  the  reason  for  it  that  counts.  A  re- 
markable thing  about  the  insurgent  agita- 
tion was  that  Roosevelt  encouraged  it. 
Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  at  heart  it 
was  a  protest  against  the  aggressions  of 
monopoly,  for  which  he  was  largely  respon- 
sible, he  managed  to  turn  it  to  his  own  po- 
48 


ROOSEVELT  IN  THE  SADDLE 

litical  account ;  for  it  is  not  to  be  denied  that 
the  movement  was  accelerated  by  the  organ- 
ization of  the  International  Harvester 
company,  which  took  place  in  1902,  under 
the  very  eye  of  the  Roosevelt  administra- 
tion. 

Attention  was  diverted  from  this  event  by 
the  peculiar  twist  given  about  this  time  to 
various  other  matters  entering  into  popu- 
lar discussion,  and  Roosevelt's  nimbleness 
in  centering  his  fire  on  Congress,  which  had 
already  given  the  country  an  anti-trust 
remedy. 

For  several  years  back  there  had  been 
considerable  criticism  of  the  Government's 
public  land  policy.  Charges  had  been 
made  that  the  public  domain  was  being  ab- 
sorbed by  well-organized  syndicates;  that 
coal  and  other  valuable  lands  were  passing 
to  private  and  corporate  ownership  through 
the  wrong  use  of  statutes  designed  to  ac- 
commodate individual  settlers  and  populate 
the  waste  places. 

The  concerted  attacks  that  were  made  in 
49 


THE  WKECK 

a  few  newspapers  when  other  sensational 
material  was  short  not  only  presupposed  the 
existence  of  a  great  number  of  syndicates, 
large  and  small,  alleged  to  be  engaged  in  the 
illegitimate  business,  but  implied  the  co- 
operation of  the  thousands  of  settlers  who 
in  reality  were  honestly  seeking  to  make 
homes  for  themselves. 

These  hardy  people  were  scattered  over 
a  wide  expanse  of  territory  and  being  poor 
were  not  in  a  situation  to  defend  themselves. 
This  brought  the  senators  and  members  rep- 
resenting public  land  states  as  yet  unsettled 
to  the  rescue,  and  replies  to  the  premed- 
itated onslaughts  were  made  in  Congress. 
The  defense  offered  immediately  met  with 
the  answer  that  the  defenders  themselves 
were  engaged,  along  with  the  others,  in 
"looting  the  people's  heritage."  Thus  was 
the  public  mind  diverted  from  the  real  issue. 

In  time  the  agitation  gave  rise  to  an  at- 
tractive campaign  in  behalf  of  "the  conser- 
vation of  the  natural  resources,"  and  it  was 
surprising  how  many  there  were  who  had 
50 


ROOSEVELT  IN  THE  SADDLE 

never  seen  an  acre  of  Government  land  who 
joined  in  this  newest  crusade. 

Yet  it  seems  never  to  have  occurred  to  the 
general  public  that  the  leaders  of  the  prop- 
aganda, not  a  few  of  them,  might  be  en- 
gaged in  attempting  to  accomplish  in  their 
own  selfish  interests  the  very  things  they 
were  roundly  denouncing. 

It  soon  developed,  however,  that  the  "con- 
servationists" had  their  special  publica- 
tions, notably  a  periodical  known  as  The 
Talisman;  that,  besides  having  the  sym- 
pathetic assistance  of  the  President,  they 
had  a  thoroughly  organized  press  agency  in 
Washington,  including  publicity  bureaus,  at 
the  head  of  which  were  civil  service  em- 
ployees whose  names  were  on  the  Govern- 
ment pay-roll.  These  men  devoted  their 
entire  time  to  writing,  lecturing  and  agita- 
ting in  the  interest  of  the  repeal  of  the 
homestead  law. 

It  also  fell  out  that  the  editor  of  The  Tal- 
isman was  in  the  employ  of  the  land  grant 
railroads  at  a  salary  of  $45,000  a  year,  made 
51 


THE  WRECK 

up  by  equal  contributions  from  the  several 
railway  companies  having  lands  for  sale. 

Thus  it  came  to  dawn  upon  the  minds  of 
those  who  cared  to  analyze  the  situation 
with  fairness  that  if  the  land  laws  should  be 
repealed  the  tide  of  settlers  would  neces- 
sarily be  turned  to  the  lands  held  in  private 
ownership.  This  was  the  milk  in  the  re- 
form cocoanut. 

The  President's  alert  sympathies  being 
now  enlisted  on  the  side  of  "conservation," 
he  seized  upon  the  opportunity  to  belabor 
Congress  for  its  ' '  negligence. ' '  He  directed 
his  attacks  upon  those  senators  and  mem- 
bers who  stood  for  the  interests  of  their 
struggling  constituents, — the  homestead 
settlers, — and  opposed  the  schemes  of  the 
private  landowners. 

It  was  through  the  methods  herein  de- 
scribed that  " conservation"  became  one  of 
the  Roosevelt  policies,  that  the  "big  stick" 
materialized  as  a  personal  weapon,  and  that 
the  term  "reactionary"  came  into  use. 

It  is  true  that  the  land  laws  were  being 
52 


ROOSEVELT  IN  THE  SADDLE 

misused  by  a  small  number  of  settlers  and 
others,  but  where  one  settler  was  found  who 
did  not  comply  strictly  with  the  statute 
there  were  thousands  who  were  trying  to 
make  actual  homes  for  themselves. 

But  little  is  known  outside  of  the  west- 
ern section  of  the  privations  endured  by  the 
brave  men  and  women  who  have  cast  their 
lot  upon  the  wild  lands  of  the  Government. 
Ninety-nine  per  cent,  of  them  were  with- 
out means.  Many  of  them  came  from  the 
overcrowded  cities  and  knew  little  of  the 
trials  of  home  building.  At  best  under 
these  circumstances  their  condition  was 
pitiable  enough,  and  they  earned  any  re- 
ward that  came  to  them. 

In  addition  to  the  unavoidable  hardships 
with  which  they  were  beset  they  were  har- 
assed by  special  agents, — Government  spies, 
— who  seldom  neglected  to  increase  the  bur- 
dens of  the  pioneers  by  making  sensational 
reports  to  the  department,  depicting  the 
" perfect  reign  of  dishonesty  and  fraud" 
that  was  going  on. 

53 


THE  WRECK 

These  reports  contributed  immensely  to 
the  cleverness  of  the  special  agents  and  were 
heralded  broadcast  in  justification  of  the 
campaign  on  the  part  of  the  private  land 
syndicate.  By  this  aggregation  of  "re- 
formers" the  homestead  settler  was  branded 
as  a  thief  and  perjurer,  and  the  men  who 
took  up  his  cause  were  grossly  maligned  by 
those  pluming  themselves  as  leaders  of  a 
crusade  of  righteousness. 

Besides  contributing  to  the  financial  bene- 
fit of  those  who  instigated  the  wicked  work 
and  to  the  glory  of  the  zealots  who  assisted 
them,  the  agitation  served  the  deeper  pur- 
pose of  diverting  the  public  mind  from  the 
remissness  of  officials  in  other  directions. 

It  was  during  this  period  that  business 
combination  on  a  large  scale  got  its  perma- 
nent footing, — its  strangle  hold  upon  the 
country's  industries.  From  1901  to  1909 
regnant  monopoly  passed  from  infancy  to 
gianthood  practically  unmolested. 

The  civil  actions  instituted  against  the 
trusts  by  the  Department  of  Justice  were 
54 


ROOSEVELT  IN  THE  SADDLE 

paraded  as  evidence  that  the  administration 
was  alert  in  enforcing  the  law.  Thus  the 
public  was  entertained  and  comforted,  but 
the  trust  itself  was  not  restrained. 

It  could  well  afford  to  pay  the  insignificant 
fines  imposed  and  pass  on  to  greater  achieve- 
ments and  permanency.  Yet  the  records  of 
the  department  do  not  disclose  a  single  in- 
stance wherein  any  individual  of  note  en- 
gaged in  breaking  the  laws  of  his  country 
was  sent  to  jail.  The  punishment  of  lesser 
offenders  against  the  long  list  of  criminal 
statutes  went  on  unabated,  while  the  "big 
fish"  went  free. 

These  facts  of  history,  used  in  a  desultory 
way  in  the  heat  of  campaigns  gone  by,  de- 
serve to  be  recorded  in  the  light  of  some  im- 
portant results  that  followed.  They  are 
entitled  to  consideration  here  because  of 
their  ominous  consequences  to  future  gen- 
erations, to  say  nothing  of  the  burdens  im- 
posed upon  this  one. 

How  many  of  our  statesmen  have  paused 
long  enough  to  examine  into  the  country's 
55 


THE  WEECK 

trust  policy  under  Roosevelt?  And  how 
few  there  are  in  these  strenuous  times  who 
are  reasoning  it  out  for  themselves. 

There  was  a  certain  fascination  in  the 
Roosevelt  messsages.  They  could  be  relied 
upon  in  advance  to  stir  the  superficial  mind 
to  a  frenzy  of  resentment  against  prevailing 
ills,  but  more  particularly  against  ills  that 
were  purely  hypothetical. 

Long  ago  it  came  to  be  an  American  habit 
to  applaud  the  man  who  has  the  faculty 
artfully  to  stigmatize  his  fellows;  it  is 
something  worth  while  to  see  the  victim 
squirm,  be  he  ever  so  innocent  a  target. 
Roosevelt  possesses  this  peculiar  knack  as 
few  others  have  it,  and  during  the  last  half 
of  his  administration  he  exercised  it  freely, 
centering  his  fire  chiefly  upon  the  Congress. 

Now,  the  American  Congress  has  never 
been  a  perfect  model  of  uprightness.  Be- 
ing human,  it  has  done  some  things  which 
it  ought  not  to  have  done  and  neglected 
others  which  might  have  been  accomplished 
for  the  general  good.  On  the  whole,  how- 
56 


ROOSEVELT  IN  THE  SADDLE 

ever,  it  has  performed  its  important  duties 
creditably  and  for  the  most  part  in  the  pub- 
lic interest. 

One  of  its  weak  points, — its  very  weakest 
perhaps, — is  its  disinclination  to  offend  the 
administrative  branch  of  the  Government. 
While  it  may  differ  from  the  President  or 
members  of  his  cabinet  in  some  things,  to 
outward  appearances  it  invariably  accords 
to  these  officials  the  consideration  that  is 
their  due. 

To  have  the  confidence  of  the  President 
is  to  be  regarded  with  favor  by  the  people ; 
to  be  at  war  with  him  is  to  invite  censure 
at  home.  Senators  and  members  will  en- 
dure a  great  deal  before  breaking  with  the 
chief  executive,  or  even  disagreeing  with 
him,  save  in  matters  wherein  the  minority 
never  agrees  with  the  majority,  and  vice 
versa. 

In  the  light  of  all  this  the  ordinary  civili- 
ties of  life  would  seem  to  demand  that  the 
President  himself  shall  show  that  he  is  not 
lacking  in  those  qualities  that  belong  to  the 
57 


THE  WRECK 

recognized  courtesies  of  official  life.  That 
lie  may  stand  before  the  country  as  the  very 
archetype  of  good  manners,  thus  maintain- 
ing the  dignity  of  his  station,  he  should  cul- 
tivate urbanity. 

This  quality  was  inherent  in  Washington, 
in  Lincoln,  and  in  McKinley.  It  was  lack- 
ing in  Roosevelt.  His  attitude  toward 
Congress  was  not  unlike  his  attitude  toward 
a  fresh  squad  of  very  coarse  policemen 
when  he  was  commissioner  in  New  York. 
One  would  suppose  that  with  his  superior 
ability  and  having  enjoyed  exceptional  edu- 
cational advantages,  he  would  have  discov- 
ered, in  the  natural  order  of  things,  that 
there  is  a  wide  difference  between  the  point 
of  view  and  the  importance  of  a  constable 
and  that  of  the  men  whom  the  people  choose 
to  make  their  laws  in  Congress. 

Roosevelt  did  not  distinguish  between  the 
two  grades  of  men.  President  Roosevelt 
did  not  rise  above  Police  Commissioner 
Roosevelt.  It  is  not  surprising  therefore 
that  he  forgot  some  things  that  are  due  to 
58 


ROOSEVELT  IN  THE  SADDLE 

the  great  office  of  President  of  the  United 
States.  Not  that  it  is  out  of  place  for  the 
President  to  lecture  Congress  as  a  body  if 
occasion  require  it,  but  it  must  be  done  in 
a  way  not  to  cast  reproach  upon  it. 

It  should  be  assumed  that  Congress  is 
composed  of  men  of  the  highest  motives. 
Should  it  turn  out  that  this  is  not  the  case 
the  people  themselves  will  make  the  discov- 
ery. It  is  not  for  the  President  because  he 
is  sometimes  spoken  of  as  being  at  the  head 
of  the  nation, — which  is  not  strictly  a  fact, 
— to  belittle  his  fellow  officials,  whose  re- 
sponsibilities, in  their  sphere,  are  quite  as 
great  as  his. 

To  judge  of  the  American  Congress  by 
the  Roosevelt  estimate,  as  outlined  in  some 
of  his  public  utterances,  but  more  especially 
in  his  contemptuous  general  disregard  of  it, 
one  might  be  inclined  to  look  upon  it  as  a 
body  of  very  inferior  persons  banded  to- 
gether for  plunder.  This  is  the  hurtful  im- 
pression created  by  Roosevelt's  attitude  to- 
ward it. 

59 


THE  WRECK 

Yet  it  was  this  branch  of  the  Govern- 
ment that  gave  the  country  that  legislative 
masterpiece  known  as  the  Sherman  anti- 
trust law,  which  Roosevelt  took  a  solemn 
oath  to  enforce.  It  was  his  insolent  disre- 
gard for  the  vital  provisions  of  this  statute, 
which  the  "good  trusts"  were  permitted  to 
override,  that  changed  our  republican 
institutions  to  an  oligarchy  of  legalized 
monopoly. 

Indisputable  proof  of  this  statement  is 
found  in  a  remarkable  letter  written  in  1907 
by  the  Roosevelt  Commissioner  of  Corpora- 
tions, Herbert  Knox  Smith,  an  official  who, 
upon  his  retirement  to  private  life,  allied 
himself  with  the  bolting  Roosevelt  politi- 
cians, now  under  the  financial  care  of  George 
W.  Perkins,  organizer  of  trusts. 

A  more  flagrant  betrayal  of  the  people 
than  the  one  revealed  in  this  confidential 
letter  cannot  be  found  in  all  the  annals  of 
our  time,  and  we  are  left  to  wonder  which 
of  the  many  very  able  lawyers  on  the  re- 
tained list  of  the  powerful  Morgan  inter- 
60 


ROOSEVELT  IN  THE  SADDLE 

ests  was  the  author  of  the  frank  and  care- 
fully prepared  document. 

A  recital  of  the  details  whereby  it  came  to 
light  makes  an  interesting  chapter  in  itself 
and  fixes  beyond  all  peradventure  the  part 
that  Roosevelt  played  in  the  great  conspir- 
acy. Liberal  excerpts  from  the  letter  will 
suffice.  It  should  be  explained,  however, 
that  the  letter,  although  written  in  the  fall 
of  1907,  was  not  made  public  until  three 
years  later. 

And  had  it  not  been  for  the  positive  state- 
ment of  Colonel  Roosevelt  that  he  had  not 
ordered  the  suspension  of  legal  proceedings 
against  the  Harvester  monopoly,  when  the 
contrary  was  known  by  a  very  few  to  be 
true,  the  letter  would  still  be  a  part  of  the 
secret  archives  of  the  Department  of  Com- 
merce and  Labor,  where  it  is  claimed  to 
have  originated.  At  any  rate,  it  was  signed 
by  Commissioner  Smith. 

It  furnishes  a  startling  revelation  of  the 
close  relations  which  had  long  existed  be- 
tween the  then  President  and  the  arch  or- 
61 


THE  WRECK 

ganizer  of  trusts,  Mr.  Perkins.  It  also 
reveals  the  real  attitude  of  Roosevelt  in  the 
matter  of  law  enforcement;  and  it  shows 
how  lightly  his  oath  of  office  sat  upon  his 
conscience  and  how  he  used  his  high  place 
to  shield  his  personal  and  political  friends. 
The  letter  begins: 

"On  August  27,  1907,  by  direction  of  the  President,  I  met 
Mr.  George  W.  Perkins,  chairman  of  the  finance  committee  of 
the  International  Harvester  Company,  and  discussed  the  mat- 
ter with  him.  August  26  I  saw  the  President  and  stated 
briefly  my  views,  and  upon  his  instructions  I  then,  on  the 
next  day,  saw  the  Attorney  General  at  Lenox,  Mass." 

Although  the  case  had  been  prepared 
ready  to  file  with  the  court  months  before, 
Attorney  General  Bonaparte  told  Mr. 
Smith  that  he  was  not  ready  to  take  it  up. 
Mr.  Smith  then  goes  on  to  say  that  he  did 
not  discuss  the  matter  further  with  Mr. 
Bonaparte,  "knowing  that  the  President 
had  instructed  the  Attorney  General  to  take 
no  further  action  in  this  matter"  until  "a 
final  conference  could  be  held." 

There  is  no  record  of  any  such  "  final  con- 
62 


ROOSEVELT  IN  THE  SADDLE 

ference."  Yet  there  is  no  doubt  that  sev- 
eral were  held,  for  Mr.  Perkins  continued  to 
be  a  visitor  at  the  White  House,  the  Bureau 
of  Corporations,  and  the  Department  of 
Justice. 

That  the  Harvester  monopolists  were  in 
full  accord  with  the  policy  of  the  adminis- 
tration and  were  trying  to  forget  their 
original  offense, — the  creation  of  a  combina- 
tion in  restraint  of  trade, — appears  further 
along  in  the  letter : 

"Briefly,  the  International  Harvester  Company,  through 
Mr.  Perkins,  takes  the  position  that  it  has,  ever  since  the 
creation  of  the  Bureau  of  Corporations,  endeavored  to  put 
itself  in  line  with  the  policy  of  publicity  maintained  by  the 
Administration;  that,  so  far  as  it  is  aware,  it  has  committed 
no  violation  of  any  statute;  that  it  has  continued  to  offer 
to  the  bureau  from  time  to  time  complete  access  to  all  its 
books  and  papers  and  to  give  all  the  information  desired  as 
to  its  operation;  that  it  has,  indeed,  frequently  urged  sxich 
investigation  by  the  bureau;  that  it  can  obtain  no  direct 
information  at  all  as  to  the  nature  of  the  charges  against  it, 
but  that  it  has  reason  to  believe  that  the  case  against  it  is 
purely  a  technical,  legal  one  under  the  Sherman  law,  involving 
merely  an  interesting  legal  question  as  to  whether  the  or- 
ganization of  the  company  per  se  constitutes  a  combination 
in  restraint  of  trade,  and  that  no  moral  sin  or  methods  of 
unfair  competition  are  included  in  said  case." 

63 


THE  WRECK 

But  for  the  serious  consequences  to  man- 
kind involved  in  the  rise  and  the  progress 
of  monopoly  in  the  United  States  under 
Eoosevelt  the  letter  of  his  commissioner  and 
the  view  taken  by  the  " harvesters"  would 
be  almost  humorous.  It  recalls  an  incident 
in  the  early  history  of  a  western  state.  A 
prominent  citizen  had  stolen  a  horse  and  was 
in  an  adjoining  state  trying  to  dispose  of  it. 
Failing  in  this,  he  agreed  to  do  some  plow- 
ing for  a  farmer.  After  a  time,  under  the 
mollifying  influence  of  his  earnings,  no 
doubt,  he  wrote  home  to  his  son  to  see  the 
sheriff  and  tell  him  that  as  the  animal  was 
being  put  to  good  use  in  advancing  the  in- 
terests of  agriculture  no  "moral  sin"  had 
been  committed. 

The  Smith  letter  continues: 

"To  the  extent  of  my  present  knowledge,  I  am  satisfied 
that  the  facts  are  as  stated  by  the  said  company,  with  the 
single  exception  that  I  do  not  have  definite  knowledge  as 
to  the  nature  of  the  case  now  in  the  hands  of  the  Department 
of  Justice,  but,  from  expressions  of  the  Attorney  General,  I 
am  inclined  to  believe  that  it  is,  as  Mr.  Perkins  stated,  a 

64 


ROOSEVELT  IN  THE  SADDLE 

purely  technical,  legal  question.  As  to  the  principle  of  fair 
dealing  and  good  policy  involved,  I  also  concur  emphatically 
with  the  attitude  of  the  company.  It  is  certainly  true  that 
this  company  has  been  most  open  with  the  bureau." 

Mr.  Smith's  emphatic  concurrence  "with 
the  attitude  of  the  company"  appears  to 
have  met  with  the  concurrence  of  the  Presi- 
dent, who  permitted  Mr.  Perkins,  through 
Mr.  Smith,  to  use  a  Senate  resolution  to 
smother  action  on  the  part  of  the  Depart- 
ment of  Justice,  which  decided  to  withhold 
its  suit  so  long  as  the  Department  of  Com- 
merce and  Labor  was  engaged  in  making  an 
investigation.  With  this  Smith  ceased  to 
investigate!  The  Senate  resolution  was 
held  in  his  office  nearly  seven  years  from  the 
date  of  its  passage, — another  illustration  of 
"how  not  to  do  it."  The  intimate  relations 
of  the  "good  trusts"  with  Mr.  Smith's 
bureau  are  thus  set  forth: 


"Furthermore,  the  attitude  of  the  Morgan  interests  gener- 
ally, which  controlled  this  company,  has  been  one  of 
active  cooperation.  In  the  investigation  of  the  steel  in- 
dustry the  United  States  Steel  Corporation  has  already  spent 
thousands  of  dollars  in  compiling  for  the  bureau  the  most 

65 


THE  WRECK 

complete  and  intimate  information  as  to  the  business,  and 
its  officers  have  gone  to  immense  trouble  and  loss  of  time  to 
facilitate  in  every  way  our  work." 

At  this  point  the  letter  reveals  the  fact 
that  Mr.  Perkins  saw  and  talked  with  Mr. 
Smith  August  24,  two  days  before  Smith 
sent  his  letter  to  the  President.  In  that  in- 
terview Mr.  Perkins  said: 

"That  the  interests  he  represented,  including  not  only  the 
International  Harvester  Company,  but  also  the  far-reaching 
Morgan  interests  generally,  had  originally  favored  the  crea- 
tion of  the  Bureau  of  Corporations  and  the  policy  of  the 
President  which  that  bureau  represents.  He  concluded,  with 
great  emphasis,  with  the  remark  that  if  after  all  the  en- 
deavors of  this  company  and  the  other  Morgan  interests  to 
uphold  the  policy  of  the  Administration  and  to  adopt  their 
method  of  modern  publicity,  this  company  was  now  to  be  at- 
tacked in  a  purely  technical  case,  the  interests  he  represented 
were  going  to  fight.  So  far  as  I  have  knowledge  of  the  facts 
set  forth  by  Mr.  Perkins,"  Mr.  Smith  wrote,  "I  believe  them 
to  be  true.  I  have  no  knowledge  of  any  moral  ground  for 
attack  on  the  company." 

But  the  hero  of  San  Juan  Hill  seems  not 
to  have  been  in  a  fighting  mood  just  then. 
He  swallowed  Mr.  Perkins '  threat  and  per- 
mitted him  to  have  his  own  way  in  the  mat- 
ter. 

66 


ROOSEVELT  IN  THE  SADDLE 

And  now  we  have  an  exhibition  of  the 
ease  with  which  a  bureau  official,  in  further- 
ance of  a  President's  policy,  overturns  an 
act  of  Congress : 

"I  believe  that  industrial  combination  is  an  economic 
necessity;  that  the  Sherman  law,  as  interpreted  by  the 
Supreme  Court,  is  an  economic  absurdity  and  is  impossible 
of  general  enforcement  and,  even  if  partially  enforced,  will, 
in  most  cases,  work  only  evil.  I  believe  the  principle  it  repre- 
sents must  ultimately  be  abandoned;  that  combination  must 
be  allowed  and  then  regulated." 

Every  monopolist  in  the  country  will 
agree  with  Mr.  Smith  that  the  Sherman  law 
is  "an  economic  absurdity"  and  that  "com- 
bination must  be  allowed  and  then  regu- 
lated." In  the  light  of  their  experience  un- 
der Roosevelt  what  would  they  have  to  fear 
from  "regulation"?  The  truth  is  that 
George  W.  Perkins,  known  as  the  political 
scout  of  Wall  Street,  originated  the  policy 
of  "regulation."  At  least  a  year  before  it 
was  finally  adopted  by  the  Roosevelt  ad- 
ministration Mr.  Perkins  was  very  busy 
advocating  it  in  lectures  and  speeches. 

67 


THE  WRECK 

There  is  a  refreshing  naivete  in  Mr. 
Smith's  estimate  of  the  value  to  the  admin- 
istration of  the  Morgan  influence.  Under 
this  head  he  says : 

"If  now,  by  such  a  retrogression,  through  the  crude  theories 
represented  by  the  Sherman  law,  these  interests  are  shown 
that  prohibition,  and  not  regulation,  of  combinations  is  to 
be  carried  out,  they  will  feel  that  there  is  nothing  left  for 
them  but  to  fight,  and  their  great  influence  will  be  thrown 
against  not  only  this  but  any  other  attempt  at  corporate 
reform. 

"In  the  specific  instance  involved,  this  matter  is  demon- 
strated. The  mere  refusal  of  the  Steel  Corporation  to 
give  information  except  at  the  end  of  a  lawsuit  would 
practically  cripple  the  steel  inquiry  of  the  bureau.  Un- 
questionably such  refusal  would  be  the  first  step  in  the 
fight. 

"While  the  Administration  has  never  hesitated  to  grapple 
with  any  of  the  financial  interests,  no  matter  how  great, 
when  it  is  believed  that  a  substantial  wrong  is  being 
committed,  it  is  a  very  practical  question  whether  it  is  well 
to  throw  away  now  the  great  influence  of  the  so-called 
Morgan  interests,  which  up  to  this  time  have  supported  the 
advanced  policy  of  the  Administration,  both  in  the  general 
principles  and  in  the  application  thereof  to  their  specific 
interests,  and  place  them  generally  in  opposition." 

There  is  an  air  of  frankness  in  this  sug- 
gested  partnership    between    the    Morgan 
monopolies  and  the  administration  that  al- 
68 


ROOSEVELT  IN  THE  SADDLE 

most  takes  the  breath  away.    And  Smith 
was  not  even  rebuked  for  making  it. 

In  closing  his  letter  Roosevelt's  super- 
serviceable  commissioner  points  out  the 
danger  to  the  Morgan  interests  should  com- 
petition be  restored : 

"I  believe  that  Mr.  Perkins'  statement  that  his  interests 
would  necessarily  be  driven  into  active  competition  was  a 
sincere  one,  and  in  fact  I  can  hardly  see  how  these  great 
interests  can  take  any  other  attitude  should  this  prosecution 
be  started  and  the  final  adoption  of  this  policy  be  made 
public." 

What  becomes  of  the  persistent  avowals 
of  the  Republican  party  in  favor  of  compe- 
tition, the  life  of  trade,  after  this  profound 
declaration  of  Mr.  Smith  that  Mr.  Perkins, 
representing  "the  great  influence  of  the  so- 
called  Morgan  interests, ' '  was  opposed  to  it  ? 
Is  it  to  be  wondered  at  that  they  now  have 
a  party  of  their  own  and  that  Roosevelt  is 
its  prophet  ? 


69 


MONOPOLY'S  RAPID  PACE 

A  CAREFUL  examination,  of  Roose- 
velt's messages  to  Congress  from 
1901  to  1909  shows  a  greatly  modi- 
fied spirit  on  his  part  toward  ' '  the  scoundrel 
who  succeeds,"  as  expressed  in  his  book 
"The  Strenuous  Life"  in  1899,  and  in  his 
Grant   speech   in   1900,   wherein  he   said: 
"The  Republic  cannot  stand  if  honesty  and 
decency  do  not  prevail  alike  in  public  and 
private  life." 

Whom  had  he  in  mind  and  to  whom  did 
the  public  believe  he  referred  when  he  spoke 
of  "the  scoundrel  who  succeeds'"?  Was  it 
not  the  men  who  were  at  that  moment  mak- 
ing ready  to  combine  the  competing  steel 
plants  of  the  country,  with  actual  assets  of 
less  than  $700,000,000  into  a  single  corpora- 
tion with  a  capital  of  $1,400,000,000  <?— the 
men  who  paid  Andrew  Carnegie  $200,000,- 
70 


MONOPOLY'S  RAPID  PACE 

000  more  than  his  property  was  worth  in  or- 
der to  get  rid  of  a  rival  concern? 

On  the  same  page  of  the  newspapers  that 
reported  Roosevelt's  stirring  speeches  in 
1901  may  be  read  an  account  of  the  or- 
ganization of  the  Steel  trust,  with  its  enor- 
mously inflated  capitalization  upon  which 
the  people  were  helplessly  bound  to  pay  and 
are  paying  a  perpetual  tax. 

Before  very  long  a  promising  competitor 
of  this  monster  combination  grew  up  in  the 
far  south.  It  was  known  as  the  Tennessee 
Coal  and  Iron  Company,  with  a  capital  of 
$30,000,000.  It  soon  came  to  be  a  thorn  in 
the  flesh  of  the  big  Morgan  monopoly. 

What  happened  in  the  case  of  the  Tennes- 
see concern  is  quite  fully  described  in  a 
speech  delivered  by  Senator  James  A.  Reed, 
of  Missouri,  in  August,  1912.  He  said : 

"It  possessed  such  natural  advantages  that  its  independent 
continuance  menaced  the  monopoly  prices  of  the  Morgan- 
Perkins  trust.  When  the  panic  of  1907  came  on  the  great 
money  power  threatened  to  close  down  upon  it.  Controlling 
the  money  power  was  Morgan  and  Perkins. 

"Representatives    of    Morgan    and    Perkins    came    to    Wash- 

71 


THE  WRECK 

ington,  laid  the  entire  transaction  before  the  President,  Mr. 
Roosevelt,  and  secured  from  him  a  promise  of  immunity  from 
punishment.  He  sanctioned  the  destruction  of  the  last 
great  rival  of  Morgan's  and  Perkins's  Steel  trust. 

"If  it  was  worth  more  than  $200,000,000  to  remove  the 
rivalry  of  the  Carnegie  plants,  it  certainly  was  worth  much 
more  to  destroy  the  rivalry,  and  at  the  same  time  acquire 
the  properties  of  the  Tennessee  Coal  and  Iron  Company.  Is 
it  any  wonder  that  Perkins  still  remains  faithful? 

"I  call  attention  to  the  second  incident:  In  April  of  this 
year  there  was  printed  in  a  Senate  document  the  cor- 
respondence which  showed  that  when  the  Attorney  General, 
in  the  year  1907,  was  about  to  prosecute  the  Harvester  trust 
Perkins  insolently  demanded  that  Roosevelt  stop  the  prosecu- 
tions. His  orders  were  truculently  obeyed. 

"This  is  what  Perkins  told  the  President's  representative, 
Herbert  Knox  Smith,  all  of  which  Smith  wrote  to  the  Presi- 
dent: 'Mr.  Perkins  concluded  with  great  emphasis  with  the 
remark  that  if  after  all  the  endeavors  of  his  company  and  the 
other  Morgan  interests  to  uphold  the  policies  of  the  ad- 
ministration and  to  adopt  their  methods  of  modern  publicity 
this  company  was  now  to  be  attacked  in  a  purely  technical 
case,  the  interests  which  he  represented  were  going  to  fight.' 

"This  impudent  and  unparalleled  message  was  communi- 
cated to  the  President  by  Mr.  Smith,  and  in  whining,  dis- 
graceful obedience  to  it  Roosevelt  ordered  the  discontinuance 
of  the  prosecution.  It  was  not  a  case  of  the  clay  saying  to 
the  potter,  'Why  hast  thou  made  me  thus?'  but  of  the  potter 
saying  to  the  clay,  'I  made  you  and  you  must  serve  me.' " 

As  has  been  said,  the  Eoosevelt  attitude 
rel 

72 


MONOPOLY'S  EAPID  PACE 

now  greatly  modified.  In  his  message  to 
Congress  in  December,  1901,  lie  discussed 
the  trust  question  at  length.  He  lost  no 
time  in  pointing  out  that  the  Government 
had  made  a  serious  mistake  in  adopting  the 
Sherman  law  as  a  remedy  against  monopoly. 
Among  other  things  he  said : 

"Much  of  the  legislation  directed  at  the  trusts  would  have 
been  exceedingly  mischievous  had  it  not  also  been  entirely 
ineffective.  In  accordance  with  a  well-known  sociological  law, 
the  ignorant  or  reckless  agitator  has  been  the  really  effective 
friend  of  the  evils  which  he  has  been  nominally  opposing.  In 
dealing  with  business  interests,  for  the  Government  to  under- 
take by  crude  and  ill-considered  legislation  to  do  what  may 
turn  out  to  be  bad,  would  be  to  incur  the  risk  of  such  far- 
reaching  disaster  that  it  would  be  preferable  to  undertake 
nothing  at  all.  The  men  who  demand  the  impossible  or  the 
undesirable  serve  as  the  allies  of  the  forces  with  which  they 
are  nominally  at  war,  for  they  hamper  those  who  would 
endeavor  to  find  out  in  rational  fashion  what  the  wrongs 
really  are  and  to  what  extent  and  in  what  manner  it  is 
practicable  to  apply  remedies." 

A  mild  rebuke,  it  will  be  observed,  to  those 
eminent  statesmen, — Edmunds,  Hoar, 
George,  Sherman,  and  others, — who  had 
given  the  subject  the  study  of  a  lifetime. 
However,  Roosevelt  had  been  in  office  all  of 
73 


THE  WRECK 

two  months,  and  in  " rational  fashion"  had 
arrived  at  a  solution  of  the  problem.  Yet  he 
was  shrewd  enough  not  to  overlook  the  fact 
that  there  were  "real  and  grave  evils,"  for 
he  went  on  to  say : 

"All  this  is  true;  and  yet  it  is  also  true  that  there  are 
real  and  grave  evils,  one  of  the  chief  being  over-capitalization 
because  of  its  many  baleful  consequences;  and  a  resolute  and 
practical  effort  must  be  made  to  correct  these  evils. 

"There  is  a  widespread  conviction  in  the  minds  of  the 
American  people  that  the  great  corporations  known  as  trusts 
are  in  certain  of  their  features  and  tendencies  hurtful  to  the 
general  welfare.  This  springs  from  no  spirit  of  envy  or  un- 
charitableness,  nor  lack  of  pride  in  the  great  industrial 
achievements  that  have  placed  this  country  at  the  head  of 
the  nations  struggling  for  commercial  supremacy." 

As  time  passed  he  evolved  his  scheme  of 
"regulation  and  supervision,"  which  the 
Smith  letter  subsequently  described  to  be 
"the  policy  of  the  administration,"  vigor- 
ously indorsed  by  the  Morgan  interests. 

However,  before  reaching  a  definite  con- 
clusion in  regard  to  "my  policy"  Roosevelt 
indulged  in  a  hasty  examination  of  the  Fed- 
eral Constitution,  and  in  doing  so  he  made  a 
wonderful  discovery.  It  was  this: 
74 


MONOPOLY'S  RAPID  PACE 

"The  power  of  the  Congress  to  regulate  interstate  com- 
merce is  an  absolute  and  unqualified  grant,  and  without 
limitations  other  than  those  prescribed  by  the  Constitution. 
The  Congress  has  constitutional  authority  to  make  all  laws 
necessary  and  proper  for  executing  this  power,  and  I  am 
satisfied  that  this  power  has  not  been  exhausted  by  any 
legislation  now  on  the  statute  books.  It  is  evident,  there- 
fore, that  evils  restrictive  of  commercial  freedom  and  en- 
tailing restraint  upon  national  commerce  fall  within  the 
regulative  power  of  the  Congress,  and  that  a  wise  and  reason- 
able law  would  be  a  necessary  and  proper  exercise  of  Con- 
gressional authority  to  the  end  that  such  evils  should  be 
eradicated." 

Until  now  it  had  been  supposed  that  the 
framers  of  the  Sherman  law,  being  some- 
what familiar  with  our  great  organic  act, 
had  followed  it  quite  closely  in  the  work 
that  they  had  done.  In  their  opinion  they 
had  succeeded  in  exhausting  all  the  constitu- 
tional power  to  be  found,  and  all  that  was 
necessary  now  was  for  the  President  to  en- 
force the  statute  that  they  had  written,  be- 
ginning with  its  first  three  sections.  It 
must  have  been  a  great  surprise  to  them  to 
be  told  by  this  novice  in  statecraft  that  they 
had  not  known  exactly  what  they  were  do- 
ing. As  Senator  Edmunds  is  said  to  have 
75 


THE  WRECK 

remarked  to  a  friend:  "What  meat  doth 
this  our  Caesar  feed  upon  that  he  hath 
grown  so  great?" 

Roosevelt  continued  to  urge  his  policy  of 
regulation  and  supervision,  and  the  Morgan 
interests  continued  to  commend  Roosevelt 
and  back  him  up.  He  asked  Congress  to 
make  provision  for  a  Department  of  Com- 
merce and  Labor.  It  did  so,  and  in  1903  the 
new  department  was  organized.  His  con- 
ception of  the  duties  of  the  department  are 
set  forth  in  his  message  of  December  of  that 
year: 

"It  is  not  designed  to  restrict  or  control  the  fullest  liberty 
of  legitimate  business  action,  but  to  secure  exact  and 
authentic  information  which  will  aid  the  Executive  in  en- 
forcing existing  laws,  and  which  will  enable  the  Congress  to 
enact  additional  legislation,  if  any  should  be  found  necessary, 
in  order  to  prevent  the  few  from  obtaining  privileges  at  the 
expense  of  diminished  opportunities  for  the  many." 

Referring  to  the  Bureau  of  Corporations 
he  said  that  its  purpose  was  "not  to  embar- 
rass or  assail  legitimate  business."  No 
longer,  therefore,  was  the  Sherman  law  to 
apply  to  all  corporations  organized  in  re- 
76 


MONOPOLY'S  RAPID  PACE 

straint  of  trade,  but  only  to  such  corpora- 
tions as  the  President  might  decide  upon  as 
being  ''illegitimate."  Thus  did  the  will  of 
Mr.  Roosevelt  come  to  be  the  law.  It  was  a 
great  deal  more  than  the  "transient  dicta- 
torship" spoken  of  by  Guizot:  it  was  an 
absolute  dictatorship,  such  as  all  men  of 
Roosevelt's  stamp  have  ever  longed  to  es- 
tablish. 

In  his  message  of  December,  1904,  he 
felicitated  himself  and  Congress,  but  more 
particularly  himself,  upon  the  fact  that  the 
Bureau  of  Corporations  had  made  "ex- 
haustive examinations  into  the  legal  condi- 
tion under  which  corporate  business  is 
carried  on  in  the  several  states,  into  all 
judicial  decisions  on  the  subject,"  and  as- 
sured Congress  that  he  would  allow  it  to 
have  such  information  from  the  Bureau  as 
might  seem  to  him  to  be  expedient.  In 
other  words,  as  is  also  made  quite  clear  in 
the  Perkins-Smith  letter,  the  Commissioner 
of  Corporations,  under  the  direction  of  the 
President,  had  superseded  both  Congress 
77 


THE  WRECK 

and  the  law  department  of  the  Govern- 
ment. 

In  a  subsequent  message,  after  belittling 
the  importance  of  the  police  power  reserved 
to  the  several  states  of  the  Union,  he  in- 
dulges in  several  pages  of  platitude  on  the 
relations  that  should  exist  between  capital 
and  labor,  and,  with  unusual  indefiniteness, 
reminds  the  people  that  they  "owe  it  to 
themselves  to  remember  that  the  most  dam- 
aging blow  that  can  be  given  popular  gov- 
ernment is  to  elect  an  unworthy  and  sinister 
agitator  on  a  platform  of  violence  and 
hypocrisy."  Here  we  have  an  exhibition  of 
the  instincts  and  practices  of  the  inkfish  that 
may  go  a  great  way  toward  illuminating 
what  some  one  has  termed  "a  confusion 
worse  confounded. ' '  The  distinction  is  also 
made  between  a  worthy  and  an  unworthy 
agitator ! 

A  year  later,  while  serving  his  first  elect- 
ive term,  the  triteness  and  the  hackneyed 
phrasing  in  his  annual  message  are  depress- 
ing. He  calls  upon  Congress  to  "give  to  the 
78 


MONOPOLY'S  RAPID  PACE 

sovereign  some  effective  power  of  supervi- 
sion over  their  corporate  use, ' ' — referring  to 
the  fortunes  amassed  through  corporate  or- 
ganization. Surely  he  could  not  have  been 
dissatisfied  with  the  size  of  the  contributions 
collected  by  Mr.  Cortelyou,  his  campaign 
manager,  in  1904.  He  goes  on : 

"In  order  to  insure  a  healthy  social  and  industrial  life, 
every  big  corporation  should  be  held  responsible  by,  and  be 
accountable  to,  some  sovereign  strong  enough  to  control  its 
conduct.  I  am  in  no  sense  hostile  to  corporations.  This  is 
an  age  of  combination,  and  any  effort  to  prevent  all  combina- 
tion will  be  not  only  useless,  but  in  the  end  vicious,  because 
of  the  contempt  for  law  which  the  failure  to  enforce  law 
inevitably  produces.  We  should,  moreover,  recognize  in  cor- 
dial and  ample  fashion  the  immense  good  effected  by  corporate 
agencies  in  a  country  such  as  ours,  and  the  wealth  of  intellect, 
energy,  and  fidelity  devoted  to  their  service,  and  therefore 
normally  to  the  service  of  the  public,  by  their  officers  and 
directors." 

This  amounts  almost  to  a  confession  of 
failure.  Had  he  not  assumed  sovereign 
powers  ?  and  had  not  the  Congress  given  him 
a  Bureau  through  which  to  exercise  those 
powers  *?  He  had  a  free  hand.  No  one  was 
restraining  him;  he  was  the  Government, 
the  sovereign. 

79 


THE  WRECK 

"I  am  in  no  sense  hostile  to  corporations," 
he  says.  But  what  did  he  mean  by  "the 
contempt  for  law  which  the  failure  to  en- 
force law  inevitably  produces"?  Had  he 
himself  enforced  the  essential  provisions  of 
the  Sherman  law  against ' '  every  big  corpor- 
ation"? Yet  "we  should,  moreover,  recog- 
nize .  .  .  the  fidelity  devoted  to  their  serv- 
ice [the  corporations],  and  therefore 
normally  to  the  service  of  the  public,  by 
their  officers  and  directors." 

What  a  mystifying  web  of  assertion  and 
contradiction ! 

In  his  last  annual  message,  or  lecture 
rather  (December,  1908),  he  continues  the 
stale  platitudes  that  abound  in  all  his  state 
papers. 

"We  no  more  believe  in  that  empiricism  which  demands 
absolutely  unrestrained  individualism  than  we  do  in  that 
empiricism  which  clamors  for  a  deadening  socialism  which 
would  destroy  all  individual  initiative  and  would  ruin  the 
country  with  a  completeness  that  not  even  an  unrestrained 
individualism  itself  could  achieve." 

The  destruction  of  "individual  initiative" 
had   already   been   accomplished,   its   fate 
80 


MONOPOLY'S  EAPID  PACE 

sealed,  by  his  own  outlawry,  by  Ms  contempt 
for  existing  statutes  and  his  setting  up  of 
a  personal  government. 

"The  danger  to  American  democracy  lies  not  in  the  least 
in  the  concentration  of  administrative  power  in  responsible 
and  accountable  hands.  It  lies  in  having  the  power  in- 
sufficiently concentrated,  so  that  no  one  can  be  held  responsible 
to  the  people  for  its  use.  Concentrated  power  is  palpable, 
visible,  responsible,  easily  reached,  quickly  held  to  account." 

High-sounding  phrase,  no  doubt,  to  the 
ear  of  the  superficial,  but,  when  measured  by 
Boosevelt's  performances,  the  merest  flub- 
dub. And  the  pity  of  it  is  that  Roosevelt 
has  indulged  in  so  much  of  this  kind  of  thing 
that  he  himself  thinks  that  he  is  a  sincere 
reformer.  Again : 

"Power  scattered  through  many  administrators,  many 
legislators,  many  men  who  work  behind  and  through  legislators 
and  administrators,  is  impalpable,  is  unseen,  is  irresponsible, 
cannot  be  reached,  cannot  be  held  to  account." 

Whom  did  he  suspect?  Was  it  Smith, 
his  commissioner?  Perhaps  it  was  he,  for 
no  one  among  all  the  administrators  was  as 


81 


THE  WEECK 

close  to  Morgan  and  Perkins  as  Smith  was. 
It  could  not  have  been  Perkins;  it  was  un- 
necessary for  Perkins  to  work  behind  a  gov- 
ernment subordinate  when  he  could  go  di- 
rectly to  the  White  House — did  go  there — 
and  get  what  he  wanted.  Ah,  with  Roose- 
velt always  it  has  ever  been  some  one  else 
who  was  to  blame, — some  indefinite  power 
of  evil  portent  that  was  preventing  him, 
holding  him  back!  Yet  again: 

"Democracy  is  in  peril  wherever  the  administration  of 
political  power  is  scattered  among  a  variety  of  men  who 
work  in  secret,  whose  very  names  are  unknown  to  the  com- 
mon people.  It  is  not  in  peril  from  any  man  who  derives 
authority  from  the  people,  who  exercises  it  in  sight  of  the 
people,  and  who  is  from  time  to  time  compelled  to  give  an 
account  of  its  exercise  to  the  people." 

An  open  worker  was  Eoosevelt !  Ameri- 
can public  life  has  not  furnished  another 
such.  Before  him  it  had  never  produced  a 
man  of  his  type  who  succeeded  as  long  as  he 
has  succeeded  in  making  the  people  believe 
that  he  could  do  no  intentional  wrong. 

Wherein,  then,  is  the  secret  of  his  success 
82 


MONOPOLY'S  KAPID  PACE 

in  this  regard?  It  is  in  Ms  peculiar  hyp- 
notic ability,  in  his  talent  for  dissimulation, 
— the  art  of  concealment, — which  is  less 
reprehensible  perhaps  than  arrant  hypoc- 
risy. 

It  must  be  that  in  his  youth,  being  a  stu- 
dent of  ethics,  he  readily  absorbed  the 
teachings  of  the  early  philosophers  and  re- 
solved highly  to  follow  them.  This  was 
creditable  enough,  to  be  sure.  But  when  in 
his  later  life  he  came  in  contact  with  human 
affairs  and  had  to  deal  with  realities  his  im- 
pulsive nature  clashed  with  the  precepts  of 
his  former  tutors.  Deviation,  ever  the  child 
of  impulse,  asserted  sway  over  his  singular 
mind  and  made  him  the  creature  of  that  ne- 
cessity which  moves  the  average  politician. 

Underlying  these  conflicting  emotions  was 
a  well-developed  ego,  inherited  or  acquired 
— it  is  no  matter.  Fortified  by  his  book  les- 
sons on  civic  virtue,  read  and  reread  until 
they  had  imprinted  themselves  indelibly  up- 
on the  films  of  his  receptive  memory,  he  pro- 
claimed them  habitually  as  a  rule  of  action 
83 


THE  WRECK 

for  others,  believing  that  he  too  was  follow- 
ing them. 

Now  the  net  result  is  that  we  have  in  the 
Smith  letter  and  in  the  messages  themselves 
an  interesting  exposition  of  the  Roosevelt 
duality,  and  of  his  policy  of  "regulation  and 
supervision,"  which  had  been  unconsciously 
substituted  by  him  for  the  policy  of  law 
embodied  in  the  anti-trust  act  of  1890. 

In  other  words,  the  law  of  Congress  was 
set  aside  by  Roosevelt  for  a  law  of  his  own, 
which  conformed  more  nearly  to  his  erratic 
conception  of  public  requirements.  What 
did  it  matter  if  the  gigantic  Morgan  combi- 
nations,— the  trusts  with  which  Roosevelt 
was  particularly  familiar  and  with  the  pro- 
moters of  which  he  was  on  friendly  terms, — 
what  if  they  escaped  the  operation  of  the 
Sherman  law's  salient  features,  provided 
they  appeared  to  obey  the  Roosevelt  "law"? 

Out  of  his  studies  of  the  theories  of  the 
early  philosophers  and  his  unsteady  efforts 
to  apply  hastily  those  theories  to  the  practi- 
cal things  of  modern  times  he  erected  a 
84 


MONOPOLY'S  RAPID  PACE 

shaky  standard  of  action  peculiarly  his  own. 
To  this  reed-like  structure  he  sought  to 
anchor  our  Republican  Government.  Is  it 
to  be  wondered  at  that  the  ship  of  state 
drifted  upon  the  shoals? 


85 


THE  MOEAL  EFFECT 

THE  inevitable  result  of  the  protection 
which  the   Morgan  monopolies   re- 
ceived at  Roosevelt's  official  hands 
was  the  unlawful  organization  of  other  busi- 
ness combinations  and  the  further  demorali- 
zation    of     competitive     activities.     The 
methods    of    "big    business"    have    been 
adopted  in  many  Lines,  even  by  the  farmers 
of  the  country. 

Prior  to  the  organization  of  the  monopoly 
which  now  controls  every  line  of  farm  ma- 
chinery the  local  price  of  the  best  grain 
binders  was  from  $95  to  $110,  and  the  farm- 
ers enjoyed  the  advantage  of  healthy  com- 
petition and  rivalry  among  manufacturers 
and  dealers.  "With  the  formation  of  the 
Harvester  trust  competition  came  to  an  end 
and  the  price  of  binders  was  sharply  ad- 
vanced. 

86 


THE  MORAL  EFFECT 

At  a  recent  hearing  before  the  legislative 
grain  trade  committee  in  Minnesota  Mr. 
Carl  Rakow,  a  western  farmer,  gave  some 
interesting  testimony.  This  is  the  press  re- 
port of  the  proceeding : 

"Mr.  Rakow  said  that  the  International  Harvester  Company 
had  fixed  the  price  of  grain  binders  at  $150,  and  that  this 
price  remains  stationary  throughout  the  year,  whether  there 
was  a  market  for  the  machine  or  not.  He  wanted  the 
farmers  to  organize  and  sell  their  grain  at  a  fixed  price 
among  them,  notwithstanding  the  demand  for  their  produce. 

"  'If  the  big  business  interests  charge  us  stiff  prices  for 
what  we  buy,  why  shouldn't  we  charge  big  prices  for  what 
we  sell?'  said  Mr.  Eakow.  'It  is  the  only  protection  we 
have.  If  we  abolish  the  chambers  of  commerce,  the  grain 
commission  men,  and  the  line  elevators,  and  actually  control 
our  own  wheat,  the  farmers  will  get  what  is  coming  to 
them.' 

"Mr.  Rakow  illustrated  his  point  by  his  own  experience 
last  year.  He  needed  new  binders.  He  went  to  town  and  a 
price  of  $150  was  quoted  him.  All  dealers  quoted  the  same 
price.  He  went  home  and  decided  to  fix  up  his  old  machines 
and  use  them  for  another  year.  Then  he  said  the  dealer  had 
to  store  his  binders  for  another  year. 

"  'But,'  he  added,  'I  was  able  to  repair  my  binders.  The 
people,  however,  can't  repair  their  stomachs.  They  have  to 
have  bread  to  eat,  and  they  would  be  compelled  to  buy  our 
produce.' 

"He  said  that  the  farmers  through  the  grain  belt  agreed 
with  his  theory,  and  they  were  being  waked  up  to  the  point 
where  they  would  some  day  perfect  an  organization. 

87 


THE  WRECK 

"  'The  farmer  himself  is  responsible  for  his  condition  to-day.' 
continued  Mr.  Rakow.  'He  has  not  made  sufficient  investi- 
gation and  study  of  the  grain  industry  to  know  how  to  help 
himself.  I  am  telling  them  how  to  do  it.' " 

Now  Mr.  Rakow  does  not  undertake  to 
excuse  himself  by  explaining  that  there  are 
1  'good  trusts  and  bad  trusts."  As  he  is  a 
plain  every-day  business  man,  not  given  to 
fine  distinctions  and  preachments,  he  takes 
a  practical  view  of  the  situation  and  adopts 
the  old  proverb  that  "what  is  sauce  for  the 
goose  is  sauce  for  the  gander."  Nor  does 
he  undertake  by  the  aid  of  finely  spun 
theories  to  justify  the  proposed  infraction 
of  law.  To  the  contrary,  he  comes  at  once 
to  the  crux  of  the  situation  and  declares  his 
purpose  to  organize  a  monopoly  in  order  to 
equalize  the  exactions  practiced  by  other 
monopolies. 

Whether  he  succeeds  or  not  is  another 
question ;  his  intent  is  no  whit  different  from 
the  intent  of  the  Morgan  group  of  trust  pro- 
moters. No  doubt  he  would  say  that  he 
favors  a  "square  deal,"  and  his  farmer 

88 


THE  MORAL  EFFECT 

friends  would  grin  their  approval.  If  he, 
along  with  Roosevelt,  has  read  moral  philos- 
ophy, like  Roosevelt  he  has  not  permitted 
morality  to  interfere  with  business. 

In  his  testimony  before  the  Stanley  com- 
mittee Colonel  Roosevelt,  with  his  usual  air 
of  defiance,  said  that  were  it  to  do  over  again 
he  would  disregard  the  anti-trust  law  and 
authorize  the  taking  over  of  the  Tennessee 
Coal  and  Iron  Company  by  the  Steel  trust. 
If  a  President  of  the  United  States  may  do 
such  a  thing,  are  we  to  blame  Mr.  Rakow, 
the  humble  citizen? 

This  Tennessee  matter  had  been  investi- 
gated during  1909-11  by  a  committee  of 
seven  of  the  ablest  lawyers  in  the  Senate. 
The  report  of  the  committee  was  that  "the 
President  was  not  authorized  to  permit  the 
absorption  of  the  Tennessee  Coal  and  Iron 
Company."  This  report  was  signed  by 
Senators  Culberson,  Kittridge,  Overman, 
and  Rayner.  Senators  Bacon  and  Nelson, 
in  separate  reports,  said  it  was  a  violation 
of  existing  law, — the  anti-trust  law, — and 
89 


THE  WRECK 

Senator  Foraker  for  himself  found  that 
"the  President  had  no  power  to  suspend  the 
law,  or  to  authorize  or  even  permit  its  en- 
forcement, for  it  is  his  duty  to  execute  the 
law."  No  doubt  Eoosevelt's  answer  to  this 
report  would  be  that  nearly  all  the  senators 
who  signed  it  were  "reactionaries"  and  had 
never  been  friendly  to  him;  whereupon  his 
blind  followers  would  set  up  a  tremendous 
cheering. 

In  further  evidence  of  the  Roosevelt 
method  it  should  be  stated  that  while  this 
Senate  investigation  was  in  progress  Com- 
missioner Smith  of  the  Bureau  of  Corpora- 
tions was  called  before  the  committee  to 
testify  as  to  the  headway  he  was  making  in 
his  Steel  trust  investigation.  This  was  in 
February,  1909.  Smith  refused  to  make 
known  what  had  been  done,  and  being  ap- 
prehensive that  the  committee  might  possi- 
bly take  summary  steps  to  compel  him  to 
talk,  he  quickly  got  in  touch  with  the  Presi- 
dent. 

The  result  was  that  Roosevelt  sent  a  van 
90 


THE  MORAL  EFFECT 

to  the  Department  of  Commerce  and  Labor 
and  had  the  records  of  the  Smith  investiga- 
tion transferred  to  the  White  House  and 
stored  away  in  the  attic,  where  they  were 
kept  under  guard  during  the  remainder  of 
Roosevelt's  term!  The  fact  of  the  removal 
of  the  records  did  not  become  publicly 
known  until  after  the  committee  had  fin- 
ished its  work. 

It  will  be  recalled  that  the  action  of  Presi- 
dent Roosevelt  in  the  Tennessee  Coal  and 
Iron  case  was  taken  when,  in  November, 
1907,  having  previous  advice  of  their  com- 
ing to  see  him,  he  met  Judge  E.  H.  Gary  and 
Mr.  H.  C.  Frick,  both  of  the  Steel  Corpora- 
tion. They  came,  it  was  said,  to  confer  with 
him  in  regard  to  the  so-called  panic  of  that 
year,  representing  to  him  that  in  order  to 
put  an  end  to  the  money  squeeze  it  would  be 
necessary  for  the  Steel  trust  to  take  over  the 
Tennessee  company,  the  greatest  rival  of  the 
Steel  trust,  but  that  they  desired  to  have  it 
understood  beforehand  that  they  would  not 
be  prosecuted  under  the  Sherman  law ! 
91 


THE  WRECK 

Koosevelt  had  previously  taken  the  opin- 
ion of  Secretary  Root,  who  assured  him  that 
it  would  be  "a  perfectly  legitimate  transac- 
tion"; whereupon  the  next  day  the  Presi- 
dent notified  Attorney  General  Bonaparte 
that  he  "felt  it  no  duty"  of  his  "to  interpose 
objection." 

So  it  is  that  Mr.  Rakow  sees  no  harm  in 
organizing  the  grain  trust,  the  purpose  of 
which  is  to  increase  the  price  of  flour  to 
ninety  millions  of  people. 

In  his  report  of  December,  1911,  Secre- 
tary McVeagh  referred  to  the  Morgan 
money  squeeze  of  1907  as  "a  gratuitous 
panic."  The  secretary's  mild  designation 
in  classifying  it  created  a  sensation  among 
the  employees  of  the  Treasury  Department, 
where  consideration  for  the  feelings  of  J.  P. 
Morgan  has  been  very  great  indeed.  To  re- 
flect upon  his  motives  there  or  even  to  think 
of  him  as  being  anything  short  of  a  high- 
minded  and  patriotic  citizen  was  akin  to  the 
crime  known  as  Use  majeste. 

It  is  a  significant  fact  that  when  Secre- 
92 


THE  MORAL  EFFECT 

tary  McVeagh  retired  from  office  he  was  not 
given  a  lucrative  place  in  Wall  Street,  as 
had  happened  in  the  case  of  most  of  his  im- 
mediate predecessors.  Two  months  prior 
to  the  secretary's  report  President  Taft 
had  ordered  that  a  bill  in  equity,  a  civil  suit, 
be  filed  against  the  Steel  trust.  And  there- 
by hangs  a  tale.  It  was  the  beginning  of 
this  suit  no  doubt  and  the  temerity  of  Mr. 
McVeagh  that  helped  to  seal  the  fate  of  Mr. 
Taft  as  a  candidate  to  succeed  himself, — 
these  and  some  other  things  which  will  be 
considered  in  subsequent  chapters.  The 
Morgan  interests  did  not  forget  "to  fight!" 
This,  in  brief,  is  an  uncolored  resume  of 
Theodore  Roosevelt's  stewardship  during 
the  seven  and  a  half  years  of  his  administra- 
tion. It  tells  the  story  of  his  lawlessness; 
of  his  disregard  for  his  solemn  oath  under 
the  Constitution;  of  his  contemptuous  atti- 
tude toward  the  legislative  branch  of  the 
Government ;  of  the  suspension  of  proceed- 
ings against  the  Perkins  monopoly  in  farm 
machinery,  Mr.  Perkins  being  his  personal 
93 


THE  WRECK 

friend  and  a  large  contributor  to  his  cam- 
paign fund. 

In  a  speech  in  Boston  in  the  summer  of 
1912,  pressed  by  a  man  in  the  audience  to 
explain  his  close  relations  with  Perkins,  he 
said  that  he  had  never  asked  Perkins  for 
political  contributions;  that  Perkins  had 
contributed  of  his  own  accord  because,  as  he 
had  declared,  he  favored  the  economic  policy 
for  which  Roosevelt  stood, — a  policy  of 
regulation  and  supervision  of  existing  mo- 
nopolies; in  other  words,  the  legalization 
of  the  trusts;  for  it  stands  to  reason  that 
should  the  Government  enter  upon  such  a 
policy  it  would  be  equivalent  to  official  rec- 
ognition of  the  legitimacy  of  the  trusts. 

Thus  would  the  past  offenses  of  those  who 
organized  them  be  condoned,  their  trans- 
gressions of  the  law  be  forgiven,  and  their 
vast  issues  of  securities,  watered  stock  and 
all, — nearly  a  billion  dollars  in  the  case  of 
the  Steel  trust, — be  made  lawful  for  all 
time,  to  remain  a  perpetual  tax  for  this  gen- 
eration and  all  future  generations  to  pay. 
94 


THE  POLITICAL  RESULTS 

MONOPOLY,  as  a  national  institu- 
tion, is  not  the  only  Roosevelt  leg- 
acy to  which  the  American  people 
have  fallen  heir  through  the  violent  and 
lawless  acts  of  this  remarkable  man. 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  had  he  done 
his  duty  in  the  thorough  and  effective  way 
that  his  supporters  in  the  1900  convention 
believed  that  he  would,  the  two  great  trusts 
which  he  permitted  to  develop,  which  he  en- 
couraged by  giving  them  official  recognition, 
would  not  be  in  existence  to-day, — at  least, 
not  in  their  present  oppressive  form. 

The  early  dissolution  of  the  Steel  trust, 
which  was  only  a  year  old  when  Roosevelt 
took  the  oath  as  President,  could  have  been 
accomplished  had  he  notified  the  half  dozen 
men  who  organized  it  that  it  was  his  inten- 
tion to  deal  summarily  with  them,  in  con- 
95 


THE  WRECK 

formity  with  law.  And  it  was  not  until 
after  it  became  known  that  this  the  largest 
of  the  Morgan  monopolies  was  to  be  per- 
mitted to  continue  in  its  unlawful  course 
that  the  Harvester  trust,  the  most  audacious 
and  vulnerable  industrial  combination  now 
in  existence,  was  put  together  by  Mr.  Per- 
kins, Mr.  Roosevelt's  personal  and  political 
friend,  his  present  chief  supporter. 

Congress,  upon  which  Roosevelt  never 
ceased  to  heap  contumely  and  reproach  in 
order  that  criticism  be  diverted  from  him- 
self, had  given  the  country  an  anti-trust 
statute  which,  had  it  been  enforced  as  its 
framers  intended  that  it  should  be,  would 
have  served  its  purpose  well.  In  respect  of 
the  men  who  conspired  in  the  creation  and 
did  create  the  great  monopolies  of  to-day, 
the  criminal  sections, — the  real  deterring 
provisions  of  the  law, — have  remained  a 
nullity. 

It  was  in  consequence  of  all  this — exactly 
as  is  indicated  by  Guizot,  where  he  speaks 
of  "a  terrible  and  transient  dictatorship," 
96 


THE  POLITICAL  RESULTS 

— that  the  Republic  has  inherited  a  political 
hell-broth  that  will  never  cease  to  stew. 

In  his  last  annual  message  (December, 
1900)  William  McKinley  spoke  these  hope- 
ful, patriotic  words: 

"At  the  outgoing  of  the  old  and  the  incoming  of  the  new 
century  you  begin  the  last  session  of  the  Fifty-sixth  Congress 
with  evidences  on  every  hand  of  individual  and  national  pros- 
perity and  with  proof  of  the  growing  strength  and  increasing 
power  for  good  of  republican  institutions.  Your  countrymen 
will  join  with  you  in  felicitation  that  American  liberty  is 
more  firmly  established  than  ever  before,  and  that  love  for  it 
and  the  determination  to  preserve  it  are  more  universal  than 
at  any  former  period  of  our  history. 

"The  Republic  was  never  so  strong,  because  never  so  strongly 
intrenched  in  the  hearts  of  the  people  as  now.  The  Constitu- 
tion, with  few  amendments,  exists  as  it  left  the  hands  of  its 
authors.  The  additions  which  have  been  made  to  it  proclaim 
larger  freedom  and  more  extended  citizenship.  Popular  gov- 
ernment has  demonstrated  in  its  one  hundred  and  twenty-four 
years  of  trial  here  its  stability  and  security,  and  its  efficiency 
as  the  best  instrument  of  national  development  and  the  best 
safeguard  to  human  rights." 

Little  did  he  think  that  within  the  next 
decade  a  dictatorship  would  be  attempted 
and  the  dearest  traditions  of  this  "land  of 
liberty"  for  which  the  fathers  wrought 
would  be  dealt  the  blow  that  deadens;  that 
97 


THE  WRECK 

his  successor,  professing  all  the  moral  at- 
tributes of  all  previous  Presidents,  would  so 
demean  himself  as  to  thwart  the  best  en- 
deavors of  an  orderly  nation  and  its  well- 
disposed  people. 

After  some  fashion  we  may  succeed  in 
ridding  ourselves  of  the  industrial  incu- 
bus now  encumbering  our  progress, — the 
scourge  inflicted  through  the  connivance  of 
a  malcontent  and  pretender, — but  there  is 
little  prospect  that  we  shall  ever  be  able  to 
deliver  ourselves  of  the  prevailing  night- 
mare evolved  from  the  antics  of  a  political 
madcap. 

Unfortunately,  the  whole  grist  of  isms 
and  unrepublican  devices  inspired  and  in- 
vited by  Roosevelt's  excesses  have  come  to 
stay.  Having  found  their  way,  as  a  result 
of  blind  agitation,  into  the  constitutions  and 
statutes  of  a  considerable  number  of  states, 
they  will  remain  there  to  turn  sane  men 
away  from  public  life  and  to  invite  the  dem- 
agog and  the  ambitious  man  with  suffi- 
cient means  to  corrupt  a  whole  common- 


THE  POLITICAL  RESULTS 

wealth ;  for  this  is  the  inevitable  fruit  of  the 
propagandas  which  have  led  to  the  referen- 
dum and  recall,  the  direct  election  of  sena- 
tors and  the  popular  skirt-dance  in  politics. 
It  is  " progress"  gone  mad, — an  orgie  of 
the  unasylumed.  In  a  word,  it  is  the  end  of 
representative  government,  which  James 
Wilson,  one  of  the  framers  of  the  Constitu- 
tion, declared  to  be  "  essential  to  every  sys- 
tem [of  government]  that  can  possess  the 
qualities  of  freedom,  wisdom,  and  energy.'7 
He  was  supported  in  this  view  by  Mr.  Jef- 
ferson, who,  speaking  of  the  ancients  and 
their  failures  under  "pure  democracies," 
said: 

"They  knew  no  medium  between  a  democracy  (the  only  pure 
republic,  but  impracticable  beyond  the  limits  of  a  town)  and 
an  abandonment  of  themselves  to  an  aristocracy  or  a  tyranny 
independent  of  the  people." 

John  Jay,  a  distinguished  jurist  who  was 
one  of  the  ablest  early  governors  of  New 
York,  described  the  misfortunes  of  the  dis- 
tracted people  of  these  very  times  of  ours  in 
this  striking  language : 
99 


THE  WRECK 

"Nothing  can  be  more  fallacious  than  to  found  our  political 
calculations  on  arithmetical  principles.  Sixty  or  seventy  men 
may  be  more  properly  trusted  with  a  given  degree  of  power 
than  six  or  seven.  But  it  does  not  follow  that  600  or  700 
would  be  proportionately  a  better  depository.  And  if  we  carry 
on  the  supposition  to  6000  or  7000,  the  whole  reasoning  ought 
to  be  reversed.  The  truth  is  that  in  all  cases  a  certain  num- 
ber at  least  seem  to  be  necessary  to  secure  the  benefits  of  free 
consultation  and  discussion,  and  to  guard  against  too  easy 
a  combination  for  improper  purposes;  as,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  number  ought  at  most  to  be  kept  within  a  certain  limit 
in  order  to  avoid  the  confusion  and  intemperance  of  a  multi- 
tude. In  all  very  numerous  assemblies,  of  whatever  character 
composed,  passion  never  fails  to  wrest  the  scepter  from  reason. 
Had  every  Athenian  citizen  been  a  Socrates,  every  Athenian 
assembly  would  still  have  been  a  mob." 

Madison  laid  down  this  infallible  rule  by 
which  to  maintain  the  only  kind  of  repre- 
sentative democracy: 

"The  representation  should  be  large  enough  to  guard 
against  the  cabals  of  the  few  and  small  enough  to  guard 
against  the  confusion  of  the  multitude." 

Measuring  the  estimate  he  appears  to  have 
placed  upon  the  exalted  position  of  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States  by  his  own  clown- 
ish conduct,  the  belief  that  Roosevelt  is 
a  man  of  ability  and  learning  is  open  to 
100 


THE  POLITICAL  RESULTS 

some  modification.  A  man  may  be  able  and 
yet  dangerous  when  : entrusted  with.. public 
responsibilities.  He  -may  be  learned  in  a 
scholarly  sense,  but  if-.Ji^  uses  boJla-M^  nat- 
ural and  his  acquired  talents  to  the  injury 
of  his  country  then  verily  is  he  a  doubly 
dangerous  person. 

Boosevelt  has  done  all  this.  As  has  al- 
ready been  asked,  did  he  do  it  uncon- 
sciously? If  so  he  must  be  possessed  of  a 
perverted  mind.  But  what  is  the  degree 
of  his  mental  abnormity  ?  The  answer  does 
not  belong  here ;  it  is  not  the  province  of  this 
volume  to  invade  the  field  of  the  alienist. 

Should  it  turn  out  that  he  is  an  object  of 
government  rather  than  one  to  have  been 
trusted  with  government,  perhaps  the  mis- 
guided men  who  assisted  in  foisting  him 
upon  the  people  in  the  first  instance  are 
equally  objects  of  commiseration. 

As  one  of  these  misguided  individuals, 
the  writer  hereof  has  not  escaped  nor  does 
he  hope  ever  to  escape  his  proportion  of  hu- 
miliation and  blame.  The  best  he  may  do 
101 


THE  WRECK 

is  to  acknowledge  having  committed  a  very 
great  <Brror.  The  deception  arose  in  conse- 
quence of  what  at  the  time  seemed  to  be  a 
pres&^ig-  ptibiic;4uty;.fp;r  along  with  many 
others  he  realized  the  near  approach  of  per- 
ilous days  for  the  Republic,  and  thought  he 
saw  in  this  rising  young  man,  who  spoke  so 
fairly,  all  the  elements  of  honest  leadership, 
— the  qualities  which  make  for  and  guaran- 
tee equal  justice  for  rich  and  poor,  for  weak 
and  strong  alike.  He  mistook  claptrap  and 
wordy  professions  of  virtue  for  promising 
signs  of  statesmanship.  Simply  this  and 
nothing  more. 

Monopoly,  only  a  shadow  looming  threat- 
eningly in  the  distance  in  the  fateful  year 
of  1900,  is  now  a  power  too  great  for  even 
the  Government  to  contend  with  in  the  hope 
of  overthrowing  it,  unless  by  the  interposi- 
tion of  a  miracle.  This  is  the  legacy  which 
Mr.  Roosevelt  has  left  us. 

No  one  who  has  given  the  subject  atten- 
tion and  is  familiar  with  the  inner  workings 
of  the  Washington  machine  can  have  any 
102 


THE  POLITICAL  RESULTS 

doubt  that  had  Eoosevelt  called  onto  the 
White  House  carpet  when  he  became  Pres- 
ident the  leading  trust  offenders  of  that 
time  and  told  them  that  "by  the  eternal"  it 
was  his  intention  to  enforce  the  first  three 
sections  of  the  Sherman  law,  whether  he  be- 
lieved in  them  or  not,  the  nation  would  have 
been  saved  from  its  present  embarrassment. 

It  was  for  this  duty  that  he  was  put  for- 
ward as  the  vice-presidential  nominee  at 
Philadelphia.  The  delegates  who  favored 
him,  doubting  not  his  capacity  and  integrity 
nor  the  existence  of  ample  law  under  which 
to  do  this  duty,  believed  that  he  would  jus- 
tify their  expectations. 

They  were  doomed  to  disappointment. 
He  adopted  the  deceptive  course  of  railing 
at  the  trusts  in  the  open  and  taking  their  or- 
ganizers and  promoters  to  his  breast  behind 
the  scene. 

Sad  as  it  may  seem,  it  has  come  to  be  ex- 
pected that  wherever  Roosevelt  goes  and 
whenever  he  talks, — which  is  frequent 
enough, — he  invariably  exhibits  his  peculiar 
103 


THE  WRECK 

man  of  straw,  without  which  he  would  be 
most  uninteresting.  True,  the  improvised 
dummy  has  just  enough  vitality  in  it  to  ad- 
mit of  its  being  unmercifully  slugged. 

Roosevelt  is  seldom  specific  in  his  attacks, 
unless  he  has  managed  to  select  some  help- 
less unfortunate  as  his  victim,  as  he  did  in 
the  case  of  poor  old  General  Tyner.  He  is 
always  at  his  best  when,  having  assembled 
all  the  errors,  imaginary  or  real,  to  which 
humanity  is  heir,  he  succeeds  in  making  the 
multitude  believe  that  all  the  faults  of  man- 
kind are  combined  in  the  single  object  of 
his  assault.  And  when  he  has  delivered  his 
diatribe  one  is  obsessed  by  a  feeling  that  the 
whole  world  is  bad  beyond  redemption,  and 
will  continue  bad  to  the  bitter  end  unless 
Roosevelt  himself  is  called  to  redeem  it. 

Is  it  not  the  role  of  the  public  bully  with 
all  the  variations  that  belong  to  the  insin- 
cere man, — to  the  athlete,  self -trained  in  the 
acrobatics  that  pertain  to  a  personality 
capable  of  changing  itself  at  will  to  suit  the 
occasion?  Was  it  for  this  that  John  Har- 
104 


THE  POLITICAL  RESULTS 

vard  came  over  from  England  to  establish 
the  now  famous  college  at  which  our 
doughty  reformer  was  matriculated? 

It  must  be  that  our  European  friends  who 
heard  him  on  his  return  from  Africa  asked 
themselves  this  question  many  times.  He 
had  been  to  the  dark  places  of  the  globe, 
there  to  give  vent  to  the  throbbing  ferocity 
of  his  nature  by  slaughtering  innumerable 
inoffensive  wild  animals.  He  found  a  de- 
gree of  personal  pleasure  in  it  that  we  are 
still  left  to  hope  may  have  its  compensatory 
rewards.  The  hides  of  the  animals  that  he 
killed  are  in  a  museum  for  the  curious  to 
wonder  at. 

But  are  we  soon  to  outlive  the  unfavor- 
able impression  he  made  abroad  when  as  a 
former  President  of  this  Republic  he  ex- 
ploited before  several  learned  bodies  his 
varied  talents  as  a  preacher  of  righteous- 
ness at  the  expense  of  our  own  considerable 
store  of  integrity?  To  cultivated  minds  it 
must  have  been  difficult  enough  to  avoid  the 
inference  that  while  he  was  absent  from  the 
105 


THE  WRECK 

United  States  a  whole  year  killing  big  game 
his  countrymen  were  without  any  protection 
whatsoever  from  their  own  iniquities. 

With  their  usual  courtesy  and  accus- 
tomed politeness,  the  foreigners,  always 
considerate  of  this  nation  and  its  men  of 
prominence,  dismissed  the  incident  with  the 
general  verdict  that  the  former  President 
seemed  to  be  given  "to  the  artful  display  of 
platitudes."  And  no  wonder,  after  this 
specimen  of  his  preachment  at  the  Sor- 
bonne  in  Paris : 

"Woe  to  the  empty  phrase-maker,  to  the  empty  idealist, 
who,  instead  of  making  ready  the  ground  for  the  man  of 
action,  turns  against  him  when  he  appears  and  hampers  him 
when  he  does  the  work!" 

Mark  the  insinuating  use  of  the  term 
"empty  phrase-maker!"  Had  Roosevelt 
been  hampered  during  his  reign  at  home? 
Had  not  Congress  and  the  people  given  him 
a  free  hand?  His  auditors,  however,  must 
have  thought  the  reverse  to  be  true.  He 
said  further: 


106 


THE  POLITICAL  RESULTS 

"Moreover,  the  preacher  of  ideals  must  remember  how 
sorry  and  contemptible  is  the  figure  which  he  will  cut,  how 
great  the  damage  he  will  do,  if  he  does  not  himself,  in  his 
own  life,  strive  measurably  to  realize  the  ideals  that  he 
preaches  for  others." 

An  unconscious  self -indictment  no  doubt ! 
At  whom  other  than  himself  could  he  have 
been  aiming1?  Yet,  to  use  a  colloquial 
phrase,  "it  listened  good,"  at  least  to  the 
Roosevelt  ear.  To  the  Sorbonne  scholars 
undoubtedly  it  was  a  platitude. 

Intellectual  France  remembers  the  inci- 
dent only  to  challenge  the  soundness  of  our 
consistency.  Two  years  after  the  Roose- 
velt performance  in  Paris,  Rene  Doumic, 
writer  and  Academician,  had  this  to  say 
about  it: 

"It  is  by  no  means  seldom  that  American  thinkers  instruct 
the  Old  World  noisily  in  lessons  which  come  strangely  from 
their  mouths.  Thus  two  years  ago  ex-President  Roosevelt, 
on  his  return  from  Africa,  where  he  had  just  killed  what  lions 
Tartarin  had  left,  gave  in  the  official  Sorbonne  a  lecture  in 
which  he  laid  down  virtuous  commandments  for  France  in 
purposely  rude  and  aggressive  terms.  What,  then,  was  our 
surprise  at  the  American  Presidential  election  to  find  the 
whole  campaign  turned  against  the  furious  corruption  which 
rules  in  all  the  administrative  departments  of  the  United 
States!" 

107 


THE  WRECK 

In  his  own  country,  however,  where 
Roosevelt  has  continued  and  promises  to 
continue  his  peculiar  style  of  preaching; 
where  political  results  are  aimed  at,  the  mat- 
ter takes  a  wider  range,  and  his  vocabulary 
finds  greater  variety.  When  revolving  in 
his  home  orbit  his  language  is  something 
more  than  platitudinous ;  to  be  at  all  effect- 
ive it  must  rise  to  the  explosive  point  and 
seethe  with  invective,  such  as  "liar,"  "scoun- 
drel," "crook,"  and  the  like. 

Yet  we  who  have  come  really  to  know  him 
have  accustomed  ourselves  not  to  tremble  in 
physical  fear.  It  is  conceded  in  advance 
that  all  who  do  not  agree  with  him  are 
"undesirable  citizens."  As  time  passes 
the  number  of  these  seems  to  be  growing 
larger. 

It  is  a  distinctive  Roosevelt  trait  to  as- 
sume that  when  he  does  or  says  a  thing  it  is 
the  act  of  a  man  who  cannot  be  mistaken, 
and  that  only  "crooked  people"  will  ques- 
tion his  motives.  Here  again  we  have  the 
familiar  practice  of  the  bluffer,  who  seeks 
108 


THE  POLITICAL  RESULTS 

to  demoralize  his  opponent  by  making  a 
bold  rusb  to  the  center. 

That  the  author  of  this  brief  historical 
sketch  is  not  alone  in  his  estimate  of  Roose- 
velt's character,  as  it  revealed  itself  during 
his  public  career,  the  following  very  suc- 
cinct and  accurate  pen  picture  of  the  man 
is  submitted, — an  editorial  from  the  New 
York  World  under  the  caption  of  "  Bluffed 
to  a  Standstill,"  written  about  the  time 
Roosevelt  became  a  candidate  in  1912 : 

"Who  would  have  thought  one  year  ago  that  Theodore 
Roosevelt,  as  President  and  as  man,  would  see  this  day  free 
from  Democratic  criticism,  free  from  arraignment  by  any 
respectable  political  agency  and  free  from  the  necessity  of 
making  a  defense  of  anything  that  he  has  done  or  left  un- 
done? If  anybody  ever  bluffed  the  American  people  to  a 
standstill  he  is  entitled  to  that  distinction. 

"How  has  he  done  it  ?  Not  by  deeds,  but  by  words.  Not  by 
reason  and  argument,  but  by  assertion  and  denunciation.  Not 
by  sincerity  and  truth,  but  by  caprice,  exaggeration,  and 
recklessness.  Not  by  single-mindedness  and  patriotism,  but 
.by  impudence,  arrogance,  and  shrieking  hypocrisy. 

"He  had  great  and  admitted  wrongs  to  contend  with.  He 
merely  blustered  and  threatened.  He  had  powerful  criminals 
to  punish.  He  ignored  most  of  them,  and  by  his  violent 
methods  made  the  administration  of  justice  in  the  case  of 
others  almost  a  nullity.  He  inveighed  mightily  against 

109 


THE  WEECK 

malefactors  and  undesirable  citizens.  He  nevertheless  enter- 
tained some  of  them  in  the  White  House.  He  demanded  law 
and  more  law  for  the  punishment  of  wealthy  offenders.  He 
then  suspended  law  in  the  interest  of  the  Steel  trust.  He 
preached  peace  and  good-will.  He  practiced  big-stickism  and 
extravagance  in  war  expenditure.  Boasting  of  righteousness 
in  himself  and  commending  to  others  obedience  to  law,  he  used 
his  great  power  to  elevate  favorites  to  high  rank,  to  punish 
and  pursue  opponents  with  mean  revenges,  to  deny  to  some 
men  the  protection  of  the  law  and  to  advance  the  idea  that 
the  executive  and  judicial  departments  might  properly  over- 
ride Congress,  Constitution,  and  people.  Scolding  his  country- 
men on  matters  of  morals,  deportment,  and  taste,  he  has  given 
them  an  exhibition  during  this  campaign  of  ill-behavior  never 
before  witnessed  in  the  Presidential  office. 

"This  is  the  record.  These  are  the  false  standards  that  he 
has  established.  This  is  the  evil  example  that  he  has  set  for 
the  young.  These  are  the  brutal  assumptions  that  he  has 
managed  to  carry  away  unchallenged  by  any  authoritative 
political  or  popular  protest.  It  is  a  remarkable  showing  of 
undisciplined  fury  in  one  man  and  of  meek  submission  in 
millions  of  men  equally  free. 

"Personally  he  is  to  be  congratulated  upon  his  immunity. 
Collectively  the  people  are  to  be  commiserated  because  no 
Democratic  champion  has  appeared  in  their  behalf  to  enter 
so  much  as  a  complaint." 

The  trouble  with  Roosevelt  when  he  had 
the  power  to  punish  the  perpetrators  of  the 
great  wrongs  against  which  he  strenuously 
inveighed  was  that  he  managed,  to  shield 
those  offenders  whose  bank  accounts  ap- 
110 


THE  POLITICAL  RESULTS 

peared  to  his  mind  large  enough  to  outweigh 
their  sins, — an  invitation  to  the  unscrupu- 
lous to  go  on  offending  so  long  as  the  wrong- 
doing produced  more  revenue  for  himself 
and  his  favored  friends.  It  must  have  been 
for  some  such  conduct  as  this  that  even 
Satan  rebuked  Belial. 

Unless  life  in  general  is  one  huge  joke 
and  all  reformers  of  the  Roosevelt  stamp 
merely  actors,  the  time  may  yet  be  when  a 
serious  and  just-minded  people  will  see  a 
movement  in  the  interest  of  an  uplift  in 
society  that  will  be  genuine  and  enduring. 
In  that  case  it  will  be  necessary  to  begin  at 
the  bottom  and  build  toward  the  top,  instead 
of  violating  the  law  of  moral  gravity  by 
constructing  downward  with  hypocrisy  as 
a  starting  point. 


Ill 


PART  II 
FOUR  YEARS  OF  TAFT 


PAET  II 
FOUR  YEARS  OF  TAFT 

COMPARED  with  the  turbulent  reign 
of   Roosevelt,    the    four    years    of 
Taft  in  most  respects  were  as  a 
peaceful  outing  in  blossoming  Maytime, — 
not  exactly  a  cessation  of  hysteria,  but  a 
most  welcome  diminishment  in  it, — a  prom- 
ising period  of  much  needed  repose. 

To  all  outward  appearances  nothing  dis- 
turbed the  large,  serene,  good-natured,  and 
well-disposed  man  who  was  President  from 
1909  to  1913,  and  who,  seemingly,  had  a 
jolly  time  of  it  during  the  greater  part  of 
his  term.  In  reality,  however,  his  path 
was  not  strewn  with  roses;  like  the  rest  of 
mankind  he  had  his  heartaches. 

The  contrast  between  Roosevelt  and  Taft 
was  very  great;  the  contrast  between  their 
115 


THE  WRECK 

respective  administrations,  greater  still. 
Yet,  in  the  matter  of  results  accomplished, 
there  was  a  close  resemblance.  Each  in  its 
own  way  was  both  destructive  and  disap- 
pointing. 

It  was  not  on  account  of  a  lack  of  knowl- 
edge of  the  duties  of  the  office  that  Roose- 
velt failed;  it  was  because  of  an  imperious 
disregard  for  the  law,  for  the  moral  tone 
and  traditional  dignity  that  belongs  to  the 
position,  because  of  the  inordinate  vanity 
of  the  man  himself,  because  of  his  persist- 
ence in  alone  occupying  the  spotlight. 

Taft's  failure  was  largely  due  to  his  un- 
fortunate conception  of  the  principles  of 
the  party  whose  leader  he  was;  and  in  a 
measure  to  very  poor  judgment  in  the  mat- 
ter of  important  appointments  when  the 
course  to  pursue,  from  a  political  point  of 
view,  was  as  plain  as  a  pikestaff.  He  had 
the  misfortune  also  to  surround  himself 
with  party  advisers  who  knew  as  little  about 
the  necessities  of  the  party  as  he  did.  It  is 
always  in  order  to  play  good  politics  well, 
116 


FOUR  YEAES  OF  TAFT 

but  those  who  had  the  confidence  of  the 
President  and  advised  him  politically  ap- 
pear to  have  made  him  believe  that  it  was 
wrong  to  indulge  in  any  kind  of  politics. 

The  circumstances  under  which  Mr.  Taft 
came  to  the  Presidency  were  unusually  pe- 
culiar. It  is  generally  known,  of  course, 
that  he  preferred  a  place  on  the  Supreme 
bench,  for  which  he  is  eminently  fitted.  He 
is  favored  with  the  judicial  mind,  but,  un- 
like Benjamin  Harrison,  who  also  would 
have  made  a  great  judge,  he  was  a  stranger 
to  the  arts  of  the  politician,  even  in  the  best 
sense  of  the  term.  Harrison  was  a  born 
statesman  as  well.  He  possessed  to  an  ex- 
ceptional degree  a  firm  grasp  of  the  judicial, 
the  legislative,  and  the  executive  functions. 

Taft  was  always  the  judge,  and  took  the 
jurist's  view  of  things.  It  is  to  be  regret- 
ted that  he  did  not  await  a  vacancy  on  the 
Supreme  bench.  Instead  he  permitted 
himself  to  be  put  forward  to  occupy  a  posi- 
tion for  which  he  was  sadly  unfit.  It  would 
be  an  unusual  man,  however,  who  would 
117 


THE  WRECK 

pause  for  self-examination  or  who,  should 
he  do  so,  would  reach  an  accurate  conclusion 
in  regard  to  his  own  qualifications  for  an 
office  such  as  the  Presidency. 

In  this  particular  instance  Mr.  Taft  did 
not  hesitate.  How  readily  he  yielded,  not 
so  much  to  ambition  perhaps  as  to  the  neces- 
sities of  the  situation, — as  Roosevelt  saw 
it, — may  be  judged  by  the  sudden  turn  that 
Republican  politics  took  in  the  early  spring 
of  1908.  Up  to  this  time  Taft  was  only  a 
tentative  candidate. 

A  self -constituted  committee  of  five  sena- 
tors had  been  laboring  with  President 
Roosevelt  to  secure  a  pledge  from  him  that 
he  would  stand  for  a  "  second  elective 
term."  The  truth  must  be  admitted  that 
these  senators  were  playing  politics, — bad 
politics  as  it  now  appears, — and  for  once 
found  Roosevelt  ready  to  listen.  Had  he 
insisted  upon  doing  the  talking  as  usual, 
they  would  have  been  more  confident.  As 
the  seeming  necessities  of  the  case  were  un- 
118 


FOUR  YEARS  OF  TAFT 

folded,  however,  lie  became  quite  enthusias- 
tic. 

Notwithstanding  Roosevelt's  unexpected 
course  in  befriending  the  Morgan  interests, 
— although  even  at  that  date  only  a  few  of 
the  wisest  insiders  knew  how  close  he  was 
to  those  interests, — he  seemed  still  to  be  the 
most  popular  and  available  man  in  the 
party. 

In  a  moment  of  excessive  exuberance  on 
the  night  of  his  election  in  1904  he  had  is- 
sued a  statement  that  he  would  not  be  a  can- 
didate "for  a  third  term,"  quoting  impres- 
sively from  Washington's  farewell  address. 
In  the  campaign  of  1912  he  saw  fit  to  ex- 
plain that  he  meant  "a  third  consecutive 
term." 

To  the  committee  of  five  he  said  that  he 
would  leave  the  matter  entirely  in  their 
hands;  that  he  would  not  interfere  with 
their  efforts  to  secure  his  renomination,  but 
would  say  nothing,  conveying  to  their  minds 
the  impression  that  he  would  accept  if  when 
119 


THE  WRECK 

the  time  came  it  seemed  the  thing  to  do. 
That  was  all  they  asked.  They  would  easily 
manage  the  rest  of  it. 

Much  to  their  disgust,  within  thirty  days 
from  the  date  of  that  statement  he  renewed 
his  declaration  of  four  years  before  that  he 
would  not  be  a  candidate.  This  put  an  end 
to  the  efforts  of  the  committee.  But,  as  al- 
ready said  and  as  the  public  is  aware,  he 
changed  his  mind  in  1912  and  decided  to 
take  what  Doctor  Abbott  has  been  pleased 
to  term  "a  third  cup  of  coffee." 

Secretary  Taft  was  not  the  only  member 
of  the  Roosevelt  cabinet  who  had  Presi- 
dential aspirations.  George  B.  Cortelyou, 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  sought  the  place, 
and  while  Mr.  Taft  was  waiting  for  Roose- 
velt to  decide  his  fate  Mr.  Cortelyou  was 
making  a  vigorous  but  very  stealthy  can- 
vass for  the  support  of  Southern  delegates. 
Having  served  as  chairman  of  the  national 
committee  in  the  Roosevelt  campaign  of 
1904,  his  familiarity  with  the  Republican 
machine,  especially  with  the  methods  in 
120 


FOUR  YEAES  OF  TAFT 

vogue  in  securing  delegates  from  the  South, 
was  of  very  great  advantage  to  him. 

It  was  understood,  too,  that  his  candidacy 
was  agreeable  to  the  Morgan  interests, 
whose  close  connections  with  the  Treasury 
Department  were  maintained  through  Sec- 
retary Cortelyou,  as  had  been  the  case  under 
former  administrations.  So  close  indeed 
were  these  connections  about  the  time  of 
the  Panama  Canal  bond  issue  that  Mr.  Till- 
man,  in  a  heated  speech  in  the  Senate, 
charged  Mr.  Cortelyou  with  having  favored 
the  Morgan  house,  to  which  the  bonds  were 
sold  at  a  price  below  that  of  other  respon- 
sible bidders.  Senator  Tillman's  speech 
was  never  fully  answered. 

By  this  time  the  Cortelyou  quest  for  dele- 
gates had  reached  the  serious  stage,  and 
President  Roosevelt  hastened  to  announce 
and  did  announce  his  decision  in  Mr.  Taft's 
favor.  That  the  candidacy  of  the  sphinx- 
like  little  man  of  the  Treasury  portfolio 
should  have  made  such  headway  without  the 
knowledge  of  the  White  House  management 
121 


THE  WRECK 

was  a  great  surprise  to  the  politicians  in 
Washington,  who  whispered  their  specula- 
tions to  one  another  without  wondering  what 
it  meant,  for  they  knew  its  import. 

When  " Billy"  Loeb,  the  President's  im- 
perturbable yet  watchful  secretary,  was 
questioned  on  the  subject  he  answered  with 
a  dark,  troubled  look  that  it  wasn't  at  all 
likely  that  his  chief  intended  that  the  po- 
litical leadership  in  New  York  should  pass 
out  of  his  hands  in  such  easy  fashion, — not 
to  George  Bruce  Cortelyou,  between  whom 
and  the  Roosevelt  regime  relations  were 
now  somewhat  strained.  Roosevelt  himself 
showed  evidence  of  personal  annoyance. 

The  truth  is  that  neither  he  nor  Mr.  Taft 
had  been  fully  aware  of  Mr.  Cortelyou's  po- 
litical activities.  The  vague  press  reports 
concerning  the  Cortelyou  candidacy  had  not 
impressed  them,  but  now  that  the  cat  was 
out  of  the  bag  something  must  be  done  and 
that  without  delay. 

Accordingly,  a  hurried  council  of  a  few  of 
Mr.  Taft's  friends  was  held  at  the  White 
122 


FOUR  YEARS  OF  TAFT 

House,  after  which  a  member  of  the  cabinet 
went  post-haste  to  New  York.  On  his  re- 
turn the  political  situation  assumed  a  decid- 
edly new  complexion.  Frank  Hitchcock, 
First  Assistant  Postmaster  General,  a 
friend  and  protege  of  Mr.  Cortelyou,  was 
then  in  the  South,  ostensibly  on  department 
business  but  in  reality  on  a  political  mission 
in  behalf  of  Mr.  Cortelyou.  In  response  to 
an  imperative  order  from  the  White  House 
he  returned  to  Washington  and  resumed  his 
official  duties. 

Events  moved  rapidly  forward.  A  repre- 
sentative of  the  house  of  Morgan  came  over 
from  New  York  to  take  part  in  the  readjust- 
ment of  preconvention  affairs,  with  the  re- 
sult that  Mr.  Cortelyou  gave  way  to  Mr.  Taf t 
and  accepted  the  presidency  of  the  Consoli- 
dated Gas  Company  of  New  York,  a  Morgan 
corporation,  at  a  salary  of  $25,000  a  year. 
The  Southern  postmasters  with  whom  Mr. 
Hitchcock  had  been  negotiating  were  noti- 
fied that  they  would  be  expected  to  support 
Mr.  Taf  t  instead  of  Mr.  Cortelyou.  In  mat- 
123 


THE  WRECK 

ters  of  this  kind  the  gentlemanly  politician 
from  the  South  is  never  greatly  disturbed  by 
pride  of  opinion.  All  he  wants  is  a  "sure 
winner," — one  who  will  not  break  patron- 
age promises. 

Now  it  would  be  unjust  to  Mr.  Taft  not 
to  explain  that  in  accepting  the  assistance 
of  the  Roosevelt  machine  he  incurred  no 
obligations  to  the  powerful  financial  and 
industrial  system  that  has  its  headquarters 
in  New  York.  He  was  grateful  to  Colonel 
Roosevelt  of  course  for  what  he  had  done 
to  further  his  candidacy,  and  when  he 
came  to  the  Presidency  he  proved  his  grati- 
tude by  appointing  several  of  Roosevelt's 
friends  to  lucrative  positions. 

Mr.  Loeb  was  made  collector  of  the  port 
of  New  York,  and  Messrs.  Meyer  and  Stim- 
son  were  given  places  in  the  cabinet.  Mr. 
Ballinger,  whom  Roosevelt  had  induced  to 
give  up  his  thriving  law  practice  on  the 
Pacific  coast  and  accept  the  Commissioner- 
ship  of  the  General  Land  Office,  was  pro- 
moted by  President  Taft  to  be  Secretary  of 
124 


FOUR  YEARS  OF  TAFT 

the  Interior.  Thus  another  Roosevelt  ad- 
herent was  cared  for.  Mr.  Pinchot,  ar- 
dently admired  by  Mr.  Roosevelt,  was  re- 
tained at  the  head  of  the  Forestry  Bureau 
until  his  acts  of  insubordination  obliged 
the  President  to  ask  for  his  resignation  in 
order  to  maintain  himself  in  self-respect. 

Until  then  the  relations  between  the 
former  President  and  Mr.  Taft  had  con- 
tinued on  a  basis  of  cordiality,  and  Repub- 
licans were  looking  hopefully  forward  to 
the  time  when  the  two  leaders  would  again 
join  hands  for  party  success.  Disappoint- 
ment awaited  them.  Smarting  under  his 
rebuke  and  bubbling  over  with  "progres- 
siveness,"  Mr.  Pinchot  proceeded  to  Rome, 
where  he  met  the  returning  hunter  and 
poured  out  his  grievances  ad  libitum  and 
ad  infinitum.  The  Roosevelt  ire  was 
aroused;  for  had  he  not  selected  Mr.  Taft 
to  be  his  successor?  This  fact  admitted 
of  no  dispute;  it  was  a  matter  of  common 
knowledge.  "Why,  then,  should  not  the 
Government  forester  be  permitted  to  over- 
125 


THE  WRECK 

ride  the  President  if  need  be  in  order  to 
carry  out  the  Eoosevelt  "  conservation 
policy,"  which  by  this  time,  as  many  be- 
lieved, had  developed  into  a  sort  of  fetish? 

To  what  extent  the  Pinchot  matter  con- 
tributed toward  Roosevelt's  subsequent  po- 
litical actions  is  of  no  great  consequence, 
save  that  it  is  conceded  to  have  opened  the 
way  to  the  final  break  that  came  with  start- 
ling force  in  1912.  But  this  was  not  the 
sole  cause  of  the  rupture.  Nor  will  the  po- 
litical psychologist  undertake  to  fathom  the 
Roosevelt  mind  to  determine  the  depths  of 
his  ambition. 

When  Mr.  Taft  was  slated  as  the  Roose- 
velt candidate  in  1908  it  was  generally  sup- 
posed that  he  would  follow  the  Roosevelt 
plan  in  dealing  with  certain  trusts.  This 
supposition  found  support  in  the  readiness 
with  which  the  Morgan  interests  acquiesced 
in  the  arrangement  whereby  the  Cortelyou 
delegates  were  shifted  to  Mr.  Taft.  But,  as 
has  been  said,  Mr.  Taft  made  no  pledges 
to  his  political  patron  or  to  the  patron's 
126 


FOUR  YEARS  OF  TAFT 

patron, — the  Morgan  syndicate.  He  ac- 
cepted the  honor  as  any  true  American 
would,  without  binding  himself  to  a  pro- 
gram. 

Doubtless  his  conception  of  the  duties  of 
the  position  was  that  the  chief  executive  of 
an  orderly  nation  is  not  to  assume  the  role 
of  a  dictator  over  the  two  other  branches  of 
government, — the  legislative  and  the  ju- 
dicial. It  was  enough  to  have  the  constitu- 
tional prerogative  of  expressing  his  views 
through  messages  to  the  Congress  and  of 
enforcing  the  laws.  If  the  tenor  of  these 
views  and  acts  departed  from  the  practices 
of  his  predecessor  the  fact  would  be  ac- 
cepted as  evidence  that  he  had  determined 
upon  a  line  of  policies  of  his  own,  for  which 
his  administration  alone  would  stand  re- 
sponsible. 

Mr.  Taft  did  not  depart  from  the  gen- 
eral policy  of  his  predecessor,  however;  yet 
a  gentler  tone  pervaded  his  messages.  It 
was  a  grateful  relief  to  the  country.  On 
the  trust  question  he  said  in  his  first  annual 
127 


THE  WRECK 

message  that  the  developments  in  the  oper- 
ation of  the  law  called  for  discussions  and 
suggestions  as  to  amendments,  and  that  he 
would  avail  himself  of  the  first  convenient 
opportunity  to  bring  the  subject  to  the  at- 
tention of  Congress.  A  year  later  (De- 
cember, 1910)  he  said: 

"I  do  not  now  recommend  any  amendments  to  the  anti- 
trust law.  In  other  words,  it  seems  to  me  that  the  existing 
legislation  with  reference  to  the  regulation  of  corporations 
and  the  restraint  of  their  business  has  reached  a  point  where 
we  can  stop  for  a  while  and  witness  the  effect  of  the  vigorous 
execution  of  the  laws  on  the  statute  books  in  restraining  the 
abuses  which  certainly  did  exist  and  which  roused  the  public 
to  demand  reform.  If  this  test  develops  a  need  for  further 
legislation,  well  and  good;  but  until  then  let  us  execute  what 
we  have." 

A  straightforward  and  concise  expression 
of  official  opinion,  devoid  of  platitudes,  un- 
attended by  sermonizing  or  vague  insinua- 
tions that  Congress  had  neglected  its  duty. 
He  recognized  the  fact  that  abuses  "  cer- 
tainly did  exist"  and  that  the  public  had 
been  roused  "to  demand  reform."  He 
showed  the  most  generous  consideration  for 


128 


FOUR  YEARS  OF  TAFT 

Mr.  Roosevelt  by  putting  the  blame  upon 
the  monopolies  themselves.  Nor  did  he 
differentiate  between  the  "good"  and  the 
"bad";  he  played  no  favorites. 

In  this  respect  he  did  depart  somewhat 
from  the  policy  of  his  predecessor,  whose 
administration  throughout  had  been  de- 
voted to  the  protection  of  two  notorious 
trusts.  As  to  these  Mr.  Taft's  mind  was 
entirely  open.  But  the  time  came  when  he 
decided  that  the  Steel  Corporation  was  a 
monopoly  in  restraint  of  trade,  and  he 
brought  suit  to  compel  its  dissolution. 
That  he  did  not  proceed  criminally  against 
the  men  who  organized  the  Steel  trust  was 
due  no  doubt  to  the  fact  that  when  he  came 
to  the  Presidency  the  courts  had  before 
them  the  important  Standard  Oil  and  To- 
bacco cases.  Here  his  judicial  mind  pre- 
vailed. He  knew  that  the  final  decisions  in 
these  cases  would  be  of  an  epoch-making 
character;  that  in  all  probability  the  court 
would  fix  the  status  of  the  trust  in  the  eye 
of  the  law  against  combination. 
129 


THE  WRECK 

As  to  the  contributing  causes  which  led 
to  the  sundering  of  the  former  friendly  re- 
lations existing  between  the  two  party  lead- 
ers, one  no  doubt  was  the  incident  resulting 
in  Mr.  Pinchot's  retirement  from  the  Bu- 
reau of  Forestry,  which  he  had  succeeded  in 
raising  from  a  mere  departmental  division 
to  an  elaborate  and  expensive  service  that 
promised  to  supplant  even  the  great  gov- 
ernmental branch  of  which  it  was  in  law 
only  nominally  a  small  part. 

That  the  filing  of  the  bill  in  equity 
against  the  Steel  trust  in  October,  1911,  was 
the  principal  cause  of  the  rupture  there  can 
be  little  doubt.  This  was  the  causus  belli. 
In  the  language  of  Mr.  Perkins,  already 
quoted  in  the  Smith  letter,  "if  after  all  the 
endeavors  of  this  company  [the  Harvester 
monopoly]  and  the  other  Morgan  interests 
to  uphold  the  policy  of  the  administration 
[referring  to  the  Roosevelt  administration] 
this  company  was  now  to  be  attacked,  the 
interests  he  represented  were  going  to 
fight, ' '  and,  as  Mr.  Smith  himself  concluded, 
130 


FOUR  YEARS  OF  TAFT 

"the  mere  refusal  of  the  Steel  Corporation 
to  give  information  except  at  the  end  of  a 
lawsuit  .  .  .  would  be  the  first  step  in 
the  fight." 

At  the  date  of  the  initial  proceeding  in 
the  Steel  trust  suit  Mr.  Taft  was  not  aware 
of  the  threat  that  had  been  made  by  Mr. 
Perkins,  for  the  Smith  letter  was  a  confi- 
dential communication  to  Colonel  Roosevelt 
while  he  was  President  and  was  not  made 
public  until  the  office  copy  of  it  came  from 
the  private  files  of  the  department  in  re- 
sponse to  a  Senate  resolution  during  the 
campaign  of  1912.  It  is  doubtful,  how- 
ever, if  the  Perkins  threat  would  have  de- 
terred Mr.  Taft  even  had  he  known  about 
it. 

Another  interesting  fact  is  that  imme- 
diately upon  the  filing  of  the  Steel  trust  suit 
Colonel  Roosevelt  allowed  himself  to  get 
exceedingly  busy  in  a  political  way.  About 
this  time  he  received  several  visits  from 
Mr.  Perkins  at  Oyster  Bay.  At  once  the 
mistakes  of  the  President, — they  were  not 
131 


THE  WRECK 

few, — were  seized  upon  by  the  Roosevelt 
following,  to  be  exploited  industriously  in 
hostile  publications.  Colonel  Roosevelt 
took  personal  charge  of  the  campaign  and 
wrote  many  letters  to  political  leaders, — 
those  having  grievances  against  the  Taft 
administration. 

The  first  pronounced  movement  in  the 
interest  of  his  third  term  candidacy  was  the 
meeting  of  the  " seven  governors"  in  New 
York  and  Roosevelt's  significant  reply  to 
them.  Thereafter  the  contest  grew  rapidly 
to  proportions  that  portended  the  certainty 
of  a  bolt  at  the  Chicago  convention.  On 
the  side  of  Colonel  Roosevelt  campaign 
funds  soon  came  to  be  very  abundant,  and 
long  before  the  Taft  machine  could  be  or- 
ganized for  effective  work  Messrs.  Perkins, 
Flynn,  Munsey,  and  other  opulent  cru- 
saders who  hastened  to  Armageddon  had  as- 
sembled a  working  force  beside  which  the 
Taft  contingent  resembled  a  little  confer- 
ence of  threadbare  missionaries. 

With  the  dexterity  of  the  trained  organ- 
132 


FOUK  YEARS  OF  TAFT 

izers  that  they  were,  the  Roosevelt  leaders 
enlisted  the  services  of  an  army  of  experi- 
enced Republican  politicians,  leaving  Taft 
dependent  upon  a  small  number  of  ad- 
herents of  doubtful  efficiency. 

As  has  been  said,  it  was  Mr.  Taft's  mis- 
fortune to  have  surrounded  himself  with 
men  having  little  or  no  experience  in  the 
field  of  politics,  and  strangely  enough  he 
rejected  the  advice  and  proffered  aid  of 
those  who  had  made  party  management  in 
the  largest  sense  a  lifelong  study.  It  was 
as  if  he  had  gone  to  sea  in  a  leaky  ship  with 
a  crew  of  landlubbers  who  would  be  in  great 
luck  indeed  if  they  succeeded  in  running  the 
vessel  on  a  rock.  In  any  event  the  conse- 
quence was  disaster  to  the  party,  and  the 
surprise  is  that  Mr.  Taft  even  got  the  nom- 
ination. 

The  gentlemen  who  conducted  his  press 
bureau  had  some  practical  knowledge  of 
the  necessities  of  the  campaign,  and  had 
they  not  been  hindered  and  handicapped  by 
the  " management"  a  much  better  showing 
133 


THE  WRECK 

would  have  been  made.  The  President 
himself  seemed  sadly  bewildered,  and  while 
he  and  Chairman  Hilles  were  holding  con- 
ferences on  the  Mayflower  far  out  at  sea 
Eoosevelt,  Perkins,  Flynn,  and  other  bull 
moose  sappers  and  miners,  under  the  ex- 
pert direction  of  Senator  Joe  Dixon,  the 
astute  politician  and  mixer,  were  in  the 
midst  of  the  fray  on  land  where  the  voters 
were.  In  this  situation  the  Democrats  had 
but  to  rest  on  their  oars  and  wait  for  elec- 
tion day  for  the  certainty  of  success. 


134 


SOME  TARIFF  BUNGLING 

BUT  the  defeat  of  the  Taft  ticket  and 
the  disaster  visited  upon  the  Repub- 
lican party  were  not  due  alone,  as 
many  suppose,  to  the  extraordinary  con- 
duct of  Theodore  Roosevelt,  or  to  Mr. 
Taft's  indorsement  of  the  Payne- Aldrich 
law,  or  to  both  these  things  combined.  It 
all  came  about  in  consequence  of  the  Presi- 
dent's unexpected  and  inexplicable  depar- 
ture from  deeply  rooted  party  principles; 
in  other  words,  his  fathering  of  the  tariff 
project  known  as  Canadian  reciprocity, 
which  was  grossly  misnamed,  for  there  was 
no  reciprocity  in  it. 

It  was  this  departure  from  Republican 
policy  that  made  the  Roosevelt  candidacy 
possible.  Mr.  Taft  invited  it,  uncon- 
sciously no  doubt.  Had  he  known  as  much 
of  politics  as  McKinley  knew  or  as  Harrison 
135 


THE  WRECK 

and  Elaine  knew,  or  had  lie  first  taken  the 
opinion  of  a  few  practical  politicians  and 
followed  their  advice,  both  he  and  his  party 
would  have  escaped  the  drubbing  they  got 
in  1912.  It  is  possible  that  they  might  not 
have  escaped  defeat,  but  it  would  not  have 
been  an  overwhelming  defeat. 

Undoubtedly  a  strong  sentiment  existed 
in  favor  of  a  "  downward  revision  of  the 
tariff,"  and  it  is  also  true  that  the  framers 
of  the  law  of  1909  might  have  gone  further 
than  they  did  in  that  direction.  Still  it 
was  a  Republican  tariff  law,  in  some  re- 
spects an  improvement  upon  the  Dingley 
act,  in  many  other  ways  far  from  being 
what  the  country  really  demanded.  On  the 
whole,  however,  it  followed  the  lines  of  pre- 
vious protection  measures  and  in  addition 
contained  some  new  provisions  which  were 
afterward  used  to  the  advantage  of  domes- 
tic industry. 

For  Mr.  Taft  to  have  vetoed  or  even  to 
have  withheld  his  signature  from  the  bill 
would  have  brought  about  a  division  in  his 
136 


SOME  TAEIFF  BUNGLING 

party  of  far-reaching  consequences.  Yet, 
within  less  than  a  year  from  the  date  of  his 
Winona  speech,  in  which  he  said  the  Payne- 
Aldrich  law  was  the  best  tariff  measure 
ever  enacted,  he  called  Congress  together 
in  extra  session  to  repeal  some  of  its  most 
salient  provisions, — to  remove  the  duty  in 
toto  on  all  products  of  the  farm  coming  in 
from  Canada,  the  most  considerable  pros- 
pective competitor  of  domestic  agriculture. 

Republican  leaders  throughout  the  coun- 
try were  amazed.  To  strike  suddenly  and 
directly  at  the  interests  of  more  than  eleven 
million  farmers;  to  propose  the  removal  of 
the  whole  of  the  duty  of  thirty  cents  a 
bushel  on  wheat  and  place  all  other  grains 
on  the  free  list,  together  with  dairy  and 
other  farm  products,  was  something  that 
no  one  familiar  with  our  tariff  history  could 
comprehend. 

Of  course  the  Democrats  might  be  ex- 
pected to  support  the  proposition,  as  it  gave 
rise  to  serious  dissension  in  Republican 
ranks.  The  spectacle  of  William  Howard 
137 


THE  WRECK 

Taft  and  Champ  Clark  advocating  the 
scheme  from  the  same  platform  at  the  same 
hour  would  have  been  humorous  had  it  not 
been  so  very  serious  to  the  cause  of  Repub- 
licanism, whose  faithful  adherents  could 
but  exchange  regrets  and  turn  to  their 
party  archives  to  ascertain  if  really  they 
were  not  dreaming. 

Could  this  be  the  man  who  less  than  three 
years  before  had  received  321  out  of  483 
electoral  votes  as  the  candidate  of  the  party 
of  protection? — who  had  carried  almost 
every  grain-raising  state  in  the  Union? 
Was  the  American  farmer,  whose  material 
interests  had  been  so  long  and  so  valiantly 
upheld  by  James  G.  Elaine  and  William 
McKinley,  to  be  sacrificed?  Where  was 
the  party  warrant  for  this  strange  proceed- 
ing ?  Had  it  been  demanded  in  any  Repub- 
lican platform?  Was  it  in  consequence  of 
a  sudden  uprising  of  the  people  against  the 
well-settled  doctrine  of  protection  to  Amer- 
ican industry?  Assuredly  it  was  not. 

Having  freed  the  slave,  naturally  enough 
138 


SOME  TAEIFF  BUNGLING 

the  further  mission  of  the  Eepublican  party 
was  to  put  the  nation  on  a  revenue  basis, — 
that  is,  to  provide  the  statutory  machinery 
whereby  to  encourage  the  development  of 
the  country's  resources.  It  was  agreed 
among  the  Eepublican  leaders  of  those  days 
that  the  most  speedy  means  by  which  to 
bring  this  about  was  in  the  enactment  of 
laws  embodying  the  principles  of  a  pro- 
tective tariff. 

This  policy,  as  party  history  proves,  had 
been  fully  outlined  and  advocated  in  Ee- 
publican platforms  and  as  energetically 
condemned  by  the  Democrats.  It  had  been 
consistently  carried  forward,  however,  un- 
til the  inequalities  that  always  creep  into 
tariff  laws,  Eepublican  and  Democratic 
alike,  created  that  revulsion  in  public  feel- 
ing which  resulted  in  the  election  of  Mr. 
Cleveland  in  1884.  Emboldened  by  their 
partial  political  success,  the  Democrats, 
with  the  tariff  again  the  issue,  asked  the 
people  for  full  responsibility,  promising  the 
complete  overthrow  of  protected  privilege. 
139 


THE  WRECK 

The  voters  did  not  respond  affirmatively. 
In  1888  the  pendulum  swung  back,  with  the 
result  that  in  1890  a  most  comprehensive 
protection  measure, — the  McKinley  law, — 
was  enacted. 

Before  the  full  effect  of  this  law  could  be 
felt,  and  as  a  result  of  systematic  agitation, 
a  Democratic  minority  was  transformed 
into  a  working  majority.  In  1894  the  Wil- 
son-Gorman law,  which  was  neither  "fish, 
flesh,  fowl,  nor  good  red  herring,"  found  its 
way  to  the  statute  book.  Hard  times  fol- 
lowed this  effort  at  tariff  tinkering. 
Whether  the  business  depression  that  came 
to  pass  was  well  founded  or  not  will  per- 
haps continue  to  be  a  matter  of  dispute. 
The  fact  remains,  however,  that  the  Amer- 
ican people  reversed  the  Government's  eco- 
nomic policy  in  1896,  since  which  time  the 
protective  principle  has  prevailed. 

Reference  to  these  historical  events  at 

this  time  is  necessary  in  order  to  emphasize 

the  fact  that  the  majority  of  the  people  are 

inherently  in  favor  of  judicious  protection, 

140 


SOME  TAKIFF  BUNGLING 

equally  distributed  to  benefit  every  line  of 
industry.  Ke volts  against  the  principle 
have  been  solely  in  consequence  of  its  abuse. 
The  demand  for  " downward  revision"  in 
1909  was  based  upon  the  popular  belief  that 
conditions, — the  hugeness  and  the  growing 
power  of  certain  protected  industries, — 
called  for  a  scaling  down  of  duties,  not  for 
a  complete  reversal  of  our  fiscal  policy. 

This  being  true,  the  course  of  the  Taft 
administration  in  1911  in  putting  forward 
the  one-sided  and  altogether  unique  pro- 
gram of  " reciprocity"  with  Canada  has  not 
ceased  to  be  a  source  of  surprise  and  sor- 
row. Mr.  Taft's  sincerity  has  never  been 
questioned;  it  was  his  amazingly  bad  judg- 
ment that  will  always  be  regretted  by  the 
great  majority  that  gave  him  valiant  sup- 
port in  1908  and  particularly  by  those  loyal 
Republicans  who  refused  to  desert  him  in 
1912. 

This  was  his  first  and  undoubtedly  his 
greatest  political  blunder,  and  it  took  the 
heart  out  of  the  campaign  for  his  reelec- 
141 


THE  WEECK 

tion.  Taft  himself  may  survive  it,  but  his 
party  never.  That  he  should  have  allowed 
himself  to  be  led  into  making  this  egregious 
mistake  is  one  of  the  incomprehensible 
things  in  politics.  Surely  it  could  not  have 
been  his  own  original  idea,  for  he  is  not 
given  to  whimsicalities. 

It  is  easy  to  understand  how,  with  his 
superficial  knowledge  of  tariff  matters,  he 
could  have  been  misled.  Yet  it  is  difficult 
to  realize  how  he  came  to  indorse  a  scheme 
which,  while  it  freelisted  the  products  of 
the  farm,  retained  protective  duties  on  all 
manufactures.  Of  course  the  selfish  ele- 
ment in  New  England  wanted  it ;  to  them  it 
meant  an  extension  of  the  list  of  free  raw 
materials.  The  Steel  and  Harvester  trusts 
wanted  it.  They  wanted  it  because  the 
profits  on  the  sale  of  their  goods  in  Canada, 
where  for  the  most  part  they  are  the  agents 
for  their  own  products,  would  be  increased 
by  the  exact  amount  of  the  tariff  reductions 
proposed  by  the  Dominion.  As  the  Amer- 
ican manufacturer  has  practically  no  com- 
142 


SOME  TAEIFF  BUNGLING 

petition  in  Canada,  there  would  be  no 
corresponding  reduction  of  the  prices  which 
the  Canadian  consumer  must  pay.  The 
merest  tyro  in  tariffs  would  have  seen  this 
at  a  glance. 

As  an  instance  of  the  abuse  of  the  pro- 
tective system,  New  England  demanded 
and  got  free  hides  in  the  interest  of  cheaper 
shoes ;  yet  with  free  hides  the  price  of  shoes 
went  up.  So  too  would  it  have  been  had  the 
Canadian  agreement  become  law;  with 
farm  products  on  the  free  list  the  price  of 
manufactured  articles  would  have  remained 
the  same. 

From  the  standpoint  of  fairness  no  sub- 
stantial objection  can  be  made  to  an  ar- 
rangement for  absolute  free  trade  between 
Canada  and  the  United  States  as  to  every 
class  of  products,  but  alas !  such  an  arrange- 
ment would  not  be  acceptable  to  certain  of 
our  manufacturers.  Thus  is  protection 
made  the  instrument  of  selfishness  rather 
than  of  common  benefit.  It  is  this  sort  of 
thing  that  has  brought  the  institution  into 
143 


THE  WEECK 

disrepute,  turning  even  its  friends  against 
it. 

No  one  appears  to  know  who  first  hit 
upon  the  idea  of  this  strange  brand  of 
" reciprocity."  It  has  been  suggested  that 
perhaps  it  was  evolved  out  of  the  exigencies 
of  politics  in  Canada.  Also  that  it  was 
conceived  in  the  masterful  brain  of  James 
J.  Hill,  who  has  some  twenty  branch  lines 
of  railway  which  he  is  ready  to  push  across 
our  northern  boundary.  There  is  profit  in 
the  long-haul,  with  tariff  dues  abolished ! 

According  to  still  another  theory,  it  is 
said  that  Secretary  Knox,  as  an  offset  to  the 
offensive  and  defensive  alliance  between 
England  and  Japan,  sought  through  this 
trade  pact  to  win  the  Canadians  away  from 
the  home  government  and  make  them  our 
friends  in  case  of  a  war  between  the  United 
States  and  Japan, — a  piece  of  diplomacy 
that  is  almost  incredible.  Yet  even  this 
may  find  justification  in  the  pressing  neces- 
sities of  "big  business." 

Mr.  Hill's  purpose  to  extend  his  numer- 
144 


SOME  TARIFF  BUNGLING 

ous  branch  roads  into  Dominion  territory, 
the  Dominion  guaranteeing  the  interest  on 
the  construction  bonds,  has  some  substance 
in  it,  for  it  is  in  line  with  his  policy  of  em- 
pire building.  But  that  it  should  be  neces- 
sary to  inflict  a  loss  upon  the  American 
farmer  in  order  to  advance  the  interests  of 
a  railway  corporation  already  fat  with  do- 
mestic prosperity  seems  unreasonable. 

It  was  pointed  out,  of  course,  that  the 
domestic  farmer  would  not  be  injured. 
This  argument  was  used  by  both  President 
Taft  and  Mr.  Hill,  the  one  speaking  in  Cin- 
cinnati at  the  same  hour  that  the  other 
spoke  in  Minneapolis.  But  it  is  a  singular 
coincidence  that  the  market  reports  of  the 
great  dailies  which  printed  these  speeches 
showed  a  decline  of  ten  cents  a  bushel  in  the 
price  of  wheat  at  Minneapolis,  the  result  of 
the  pact  proposal,  and  that  it  did  not  rise 
to  normal  protection  figures  until  after 
Canada  had  voted  down  the  scheme. 
Under  protection  the  domestic  price  of 
farm  products  has  always  been  higher  than 
145 


THE  WRECK 

the  price  for  the  same  products  in 
Canada. 

Another  significant  thing  was  that  during 
the  pendency  of  the  agreement,  with  wheat 
decidedly  lower,  the  price  of  flour  remained 
stationary;  nor  did  the  poor  man's  loaf 
come  the  least  bit  cheaper.  Here  the 
American  millers'  trust,  which  was  strong 
for  reciprocity,  had  its  innings  and  scored 
heavily. 

It  was  upon  the  petition  of  the  millers 
five  or  six  years  prior  to  this  that  Secretary 
Shaw  and  Attorney  General  Moody  set 
aside  the  drawback  law  so  as  to  allow 
the  free  importation  of  Canadian  wheat. 
Their  plans  were  thwarted,  however,  and 
the  integrity  of  the  law  was  preserved  by  a 
combination  of  circumstances  which  the 
millers'  trust  failed  to  overcome.  In  a 
larger  way  the  reciprocity  project  was  a 
repetition  of  what  had  been  proposed  by 
those  who  sought  to  nullify  the  drawback 
law. 

The  movement  for  reciprocity  was 
146 


SOME  TARIFF  BUNGLING 

further  stimulated  by  the  claim  that  if  the 
products  of  the  Canadian  farmer  were 
brought  into  the  United  States  free  of  duty 
the  problem  of  the  high  cost  of  living  would 
be  solved,  and  the  friends  of  the  Knox- 
Laurier  pact  lost  no  opportunity  to  pro- 
claim this  as  a  great  discovery.  Precisely 
the  same  experiment  had  been  tried  in 
1850,  and  after  ten  years  of  unsatisfactory 
results  the  scheme  was  abandoned. 

In  proposing  a  return  to  the  rejected 
policy  of  fifty  years  ago  it  was  claimed  that 
conditions  had  changed;  that  the  time  had 
come  for  "the  cementing  of  more  friendly 
relations  with  Canada  by  closer  commercial 
intercourse." 

The  sympathy  and  assistance  of  the 
American  press  had  been  enlisted  by  in- 
corporating a  clause  in  the  pact  providing 
for  the  free  admission  into  the  United 
States  of  the  pulp  of  wood  and  news  print 
paper.  Hence  the  flood  of  favorable  com- 
ment in  the  daily  press,  the  magazines,  and 
other  periodicals,  whose  bills  for  paper  at 
147 


THE  WRECK 

constantly  increasing  prices,  which  of 
course  kept  pace  with  the  increasing  weight 
of  the  Sunday  edition,  was  a  strong  argu- 
ment against  "the  high  cost  of  living,"  and 
in  favor  of  "the  cementing  of  closer  rela- 
tions with  our  northern  neighbors." 

But  there  was  one  class  of  publications, 
— the  farm  journals, — that  did  not  take 
kindly  to  the  proposition.  They  were  not 
slow  to  see  and  to  say  that  while  reciprocity 
might  be  a  good  thing  for  the  manufacturer 
it  was  a  singular  fact  that  the  farmer  had 
been  selected  to  "pay  the  freight." 

To  the  disinterested  observer  it  looked 
very  much  as  if  the  promoters  of  the  pact 
had  done  a  lot  of  mighty  fine  figuring !  To 
Republicans  who  held  fast  to  the  protection 
faith  that  was  in  them  it  seemed  as  if  Presi- 
dent Taft  had  permitted  Secretary  Knox 
to  carry  his  "dollar  diplomacy"  policy  to 
the  point  of  disaster.  The  disaster  came 
in  November,  1912,  when  the  Republican 
national  candidate  lost  every  Republican 
state  along  the  Canadian  boundary  line  save 
148 


SOME  TARIFF  BUNGLING 

one,  and  this  one, — Vermont, — he  carried 
by  the  insignificant  plurality  of  something 
like  900  votes. 

But  for  this  tariff  blunder  on  the  part  of 
the  Taft  administration  it  is  doubtful 
whether  Colonel  Roosevelt  would  have 
thrown  his  hat  into  the  ring.  While  it  did 
not  justify  the  bolt  at  Chicago,  the  reci- 
procity incident  made  Taft's  reelection  im- 
possible, and  the  Roosevelt  candidacy  did 
not  matter.  No  blame  attaches  to  the  party 
for  what  happened,  and  had  Mr.  Taft  con- 
sulted the  party  leaders  generally,  instead 
of  following  the  advice  of  a  half  dozen 
gentlemen  afflicted  with  political  provincial- 
ism and  infeasible  ideals,  it  is  doubtful  if 
he  would  have  taken  the  fatal  step. 

True,  the  scheme  was  immediately  in- 
dorsed by  Colonel  Roosevelt  and  other  so- 
called  "Progressives,"  but  when  the 
mighty  hunter,  his  political  ear  always  to 
the  ground,  heard  the  loud  protests  from 
the  fields,  he  quickly  changed  round,  say- 
ing that  "having  looked  into  the  matter" 
149 


THE  WEECK 

lie  had  found  that  Taft  was  wrong, — a 
somewhat  belated  admission  that  he  him- 
self was  in  error  when  he  delivered  his 
three  memorable  speeches  in  favor  of  the 
project.  However,  those  speeches  were 
made  at  a  time  when  the  whole  country, 
through  a  well-baited  press,  seemed  to  favor 
it;  when  Mr.  Taft's  close  advisers  were  ex- 
ultingly  claiming  that  he  would  sweep  the 
country  on  the  reciprocity  issue.  For  had 
not  even  the  Democrats  indorsed  it! 

Although  the  Canadians  had  rejected  the 
agreement  prior  to  our  Presidential  elec- 
tion, the  American  farmer  did  not  forget  to 
use  his  vote  to  express  his  opinion  in  regard 
to  the  proposal  that  he  should  bear  the 
whole  burden  of  this  new  kind  of  tariff  re- 
duction. He  remembers  even  now  the 
teachings  of  Blaine  and  McKinley,  who 
never  overlooked  the  importance  of  con- 
serving the  home  market  to  the  tillers  of  the 
soil. 

In  his  "  Twenty  Years  in  Congress "  Mr. 
Blaine  made  the  prediction  that  when  the 
150 


SOME  TARIFF  BUNGLING 

Republican  party  so  far  forgot  its  obliga- 
tion to  the  American  farmer  as  to  take 
from  him  his  due  proportion  of  protection 
it  would  go  out  of  politics.  After  writing 
these  prophetic  words  Mr.  Elaine  came  to 
be  one  of  our  most  distinguished  Secre- 
taries of  State,  where  he  was  called  upon  to 
consider  our  trade  relations  abroad,  partic- 
ularly with  the  Pan-American  countries. 

In  his  time  he  was  the  foremost  advocate 
of  reciprocity,  but  not  the  kind  that  would 
make  our  own  farmers  the  victims  of  the 
free  list.  To  his  mind  even  the  suggestion 
of  such  a  suicidal  course  would  have  been 
repellent. 

The  attitude  of  McKinley  on  the  question 
of  trade  agreements  is  summed  up  in  a 
single  sentence.  In  his  last  public  address, 
— his  Buffalo  speech, — he  said  that  reci- 
procity was  "the  natural  outgrowth  of  our 
wonderful  industrial  development  under 
the  domestic  policy  now  firmly  established" 
(referring  to  the  doctrine  of  protection). 
But  he  laid  down  this  rule  of  procedure, — 
151 


THE  WRECK 

that  "we  should  take  from  our  customers 
such  of  their  products  as  we  can  use  with- 
out harm  to  our  own  industries  and  labor. ' ' 
This  is  genuine  reciprocity. 

How  few  there  were  in  1911  who  distin- 
guished between  the  brand  of  reciprocity 
that  Elaine  and  McKinley  believed  in  and 
that  proposed  by  Mr.  Taf t !  It  is  to  be  re- 
gretted that  there  were  so  few  publishers 
who  were  willing  to  admit  the  difference. 
Could  it  have  been  on  account  of  their  per- 
sonal interests  in  securing  to  themselves 
the  supposed  benefits  of  free  wood  pulp? 

Admittedly,  the  press  is  a  mighty  force 
in  shaping  public  opinion,  but  that  it  should 
be  thus  used  to  selfish  ends  detracts  exceed- 
ingly from  the  noble  profession  of  journal- 
ism. In  recent  years  this  formidable 
power  has  been  unduly  exercised,  illustra- 
ting in  a  variety  of  ways  the  evils  of  the  pre- 
vailing tendency  to  combination  in  all  lines 
of  business. 

A  combination  of  newspapers  and  other 
publications  to  achieve  pecuniary  results  of 
152 


SOME  TARIFF  BUNGLING 

advantage  to  the  "business  office"  is  quite 
as  reprehensible  as  is  the  organization  of 
an  industrial  monopoly,  so  freely  de- 
nounced in  editorial  columns.  The  framers 
of  the  Sherman  law,  out  of  an  abundance 
of  caution  no  doubt,  did  not  undertake  to 
deal  specifically  with  the  matter  of  a  pos- 
sible trust  of  publishers. 

A  monopoly  of  editorial  opinion  was  a 
thing  scarcely  to  be  conceived  of.  Yet  it 
has  come  to  pass.  Even  a  President  of  the 
United  States,  before  embarking  upon  a 
voyage  on  the  sea  of  public  policy,  has 
deemed  it  advisable,  in  the  interest  of  his 
doubtful  enterprise,  to  "  throw  a  sop  to 
Cerberus."  The  friends  of  the  pact  real- 
ized that  in  order  to  succeed  with  the  jug- 
handled  scheme  it  would  be  necessary  to 
hold  out  the  inducement  of  cheaper  news 
print. 

As  a  further  illustration  of  the  hypocrisy 

of  the  times,  it  is  no  misstatement  of  fact 

to  say  that  the  seemingly  righteous  demand 

for  the  modern  election  devices,  such  as 

153 


THE  WEECK 

the  direct  primary,  the  initiative,  the  refer- 
endum and  the  recall,  has  been  greatly 
stimulated  by  the  concessions  made  to  local 
editors  by  local  politicians  for  the  more 
elaborate  publication  of  profitable  election 
notices  and  the  printing  of  tons  of  political 
literature.  Profit,  always  profit  of  a  ma- 
terial kind! 

A  more  recent  example  of  the  demoraliz- 
ing and  hypocritical  attitude  of  the  pub- 
lisher politicians  is  found  in  the  program 
of  denunciation  adopted  by  the  metropoli- 
tan newspapers  that  protested  so  vigorously 
against  the  payment  by  them  of  just  and 
equitable  rates  of  postage  on  the  train  loads 
of  advertising  pages  which  are  carried  by 
the  Government  at  enormous  financial  loss 
to  the  people.  And  what  do  the  people 
get  in  return?  "Free  speech!"  answers 
the  subsidized  press, — "that  is,  the  freedom 
of  the  press  is  maintained,  which  is  the 
same  as  free  speech  for  the  people."  Was 
it  in  the  interest  of  free  speech  to  stifle  pub- 
lic opinion  in  regard  to  Taft  reciprocity? — 
154 


SOME  TARIFF  BUNGLING 

to  force  editorial  trust  opinion  down  the 
public  throat  ?  We  shall  read  much  during 
this  extra  session  of  Congress  about 
"  sugar  senators. "  It  may  not  be  amiss  to 
keep  an  eye  out  for  pulp  publishers. 

Here  in  the  United  States  we  indulge  in 
extravagant  denunciation  of  "the  barbaric 
methods  of  Russia"  because  it  maintains  a 
place  of  exile  for  those  who  conspire  at  the 
destruction  of  the  political  and  social  struc- 
ture of  the  empire.  Yet,  in  this  land  of 
"free  speech"  we  truculently  cater  to  such 
conspiracies,  trusting  to  a  credulous  and 
easily  bamboozled  public  to  condone  the 
sins  of  our  false  teachers;  with  the  result 
that  these  same  sins  not  only  go  uncor- 
rected  but,  through  lax  custom,  they  grow 
into  national  virtues.  The  unexampled 
record  of  the  lawless  Roosevelt  is  a  case  in 
point. 

As  to  Mr.  Taft  there  are  some  mitigating 
circumstances.  After  designing  men  with 
selfish  interests  to  serve  had  set  the  reci- 
procity trap  it  was  pointed  out  to  him  that, 
155 


THE  WRECK 

being  in  need  of  a  popular  issue,  by  spring- 
ing the  trigger  promptly  he  could  reduce 
the  high  cost  of  living  and  gain  great  credit 
for  his  administration  at  a  single  stroke. 
It  was  a  seductive  proposal. 

Even  the  chance  of  reducing  the  high  cost 
of  living  was  a  sufficient  incentive  to  stir 
any  man  to  action.  There  were  many 
theories  in  regard  to  the  cause  and  a  variety 
of  remedies  were  proposed. 

What  at  times  seem  to  us  to  be  our  great- 
est troubles  are  often  explained  away  in 
the  simplest  fashion.  It  was  recently  dis- 
covered that  Chicago  housewives  pay  ten 
cents  a  head  for  cabbages,  while  down  in 
Texas  large  quantities  of  this  excellent 
vegetable  are  rotting  in  the  fields.  Would 
not  this  indicate  that  there  is  something 
wrong  with  our  system  of  distribution? 
There  is  no  duty  on  cabbages  between  Texas 
and  Chicago! 

Only  a  short  while  ago  onions  sold  at 
fifteen  cents  a  pound  at  Laredo,  Texas. 
Just  outside  of  the  city  the  grower  was  re- 
156 


SOME  TARIFF  BUNGLING 

ceiving  two  cents  a  pound.  Who  got  the 
650  per  cent,  profit?  Potatoes  went  to 
waste  last  season  in  the  fields  about  Cum- 
mington,  Mass.  In  "Worthington,  a  near- 
by town,  they  were  selling  at  $1.50  a 
bushel. 

These  and  many  other  facts  that  may  or 
may  not  belong  to  the  " deadly  parallel'' 
order  came  out  recently  at  a  meeting  of  the 
National  Conference  on  Marketing  and 
Farm  Credits,  where  one  of  the  delegates 
said  that  "  somebody  else  is  getting  the 
money  for  nearly  everything  that  farmers 
grow." 

The  secretary  of  the  Consumers'  League, 
conducting  an  exhibition  at  St.  Louis  to 
demonstrate  adulteration  of  foods,  said  that 
pineapple  and  lemon  pies  as  they  come 
from  many  bakeries  consist  of  artificial 
flour  paste,  glucose,  benzoic  acid,  and  coal 
tar  dye ;  that  apple  tart  was  mostly  timothy 
seed  and  anodyne  dye  made  from  bitumi- 
nous coal  refuse,  while  chocolate  icing  was 
composed  of  artificial  flour  paste,  glucose, 
157 


THE  WRECK 

benzole  acid,  and  burnt  umber  dye,  and  that 
some  baking  powders  were  made  by  grind- 
ing white  stone  to  fine  dust. 

Surely  pineapples,  lemons,  and  the  good 
old  orchard  fruit  of  our  boyhood  are  plen- 
tiful and  cheap  enough  in  first  hands,  so  that 
these  practices  cannot  be  explained  on  any 
other  ground  than  that  those  who  perpetrate 
such  wrongs  are  a  part  of  the  conscience- 
less system  that  manipulates  the  prices  of 
the  necessaries  of  life;  and  it  must  be  that 
these  in  their  turn  are  only  following  the 
example  of  the  gentlemen  who  have  made 
enormous  fortunes  organizing  the  big  mo- 
nopolies. 

Now  in  such  conditions  it  would  seem  to 
be  the  part  of  wise  statesmanship  to  deal 
first  with  the  greater  offenders, — those  who 
set  the  evil  example.  The  parent  who 
would  correct  the  bad  morals  of  the  child 
would  begin  by  separating  him  from  de- 
basing influences,  pointing  out  the  danger- 
ous consequences  of  corrupt  associations. 
To  effect  a  cure  it  might  be  necessary  to 
158 


SOME  TAEIFF  BUNGLING 

inflict  condign  punishment  upon  the  orig- 
inal transgressor. 

But  for  the  flagrant  conduct  of  tlie  "big 
brainy  men"  who  have  saddled  the  people 
with  $35,000,000,000  of  fictitious  interest- 
bearing  securities  it  is  doubtful  if  the  food 
adulterers  and  other  lesser  malefactors  who 
have  found  a  way  to  cheat  the  consuming 
public  would  have  had  the  hardihood  to 
prosecute  their  illegal  traffic. 

It  was  the  greater  offenders  against  the 
law  and  "common  decency,"  concerning 
which  Colonel  Roosevelt  has  had  so  much 
to  say  and  against  which  he  accomplished 
practically  nothing,  who  set  the  pace  for  the 
army  of  little  crooks  of  commerce  now  in- 
dustriously at  work, — who  conceived  the 
fraudulent  scheme  of  reciprocity  in  their 
own  selfish  interest. 

That  President  Taft  did  not  realize  the 
purpose  of  it, — that  he  should  have  per- 
mitted himself  to  be  misled, — is  to  be  re- 
gretted. Harrison,  McKinley,  and  Blaine 
would  have  seen  at  a  glance  what  it  meant 
159 


THE  WRECK 

to  their  party,  for  they  were  practical  poli- 
ticians; and  practical  politics  is  closely 
allied  to  practical  statesmanship.  A  knowl- 
edge of  both  is  necessary  if  a  President  is 
to  succeed  and  leave  his  party  intact  at  the 
end  of  his  term. 


160 


MOEE  BAD  POLITICS 

BUT  the  reciprocity  blunder  was  not 
the  only  serious  political  mistake 
made  by  Mr.  Taft  while  he  was  at 
the  head  of  national  affairs,  and  for  which 
the  Republican  party  is  now  "in  sackcloth 
and  ashes." 

There  has  been  a  singular  disinclination 
among  politicians  to  discuss  the  appoint- 
ment of  Edward  D.  White  to  the  position 
of  Chief  Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  of 
the  United  States,  for  the  reason  perhaps 
that  it  involves  a  sectarian  question.  Poli- 
ticians are  extremely  wary  in  regard  to 
matters  of  this  knd ;  yet  almost  every  voter 
in  the  country  has  expressed  his  opinion 
about  it. 

Now  it  is  not  the  purpose  of  the  writer 
to  enter  upon  the  question  of  the  right  or 
wrong  of  this  act  of  Mr.  Taft's,  save  as 
161 


THE  WEECK     . 

it  concerns  party  politics.  The  author 
hereof  concedes  the  eminent  fitness  of  Chief 
Justice  White,  whose  personal  friend  he  is. 
Not  every  one  has  agreed  with  the  conclu- 
sions reached  in  some  of  the  distinguished 
jurist's  opinions,  but  no  one  will  deny  that 
he  has  a  very  profound  and  conscientious 
legal  mind.  In  this  regard  President  Taft 
made  no  mistake. 

From  a  political  point  of  view,  however, 
he  showed  his  usual  poor  judgment,  antag- 
onizing as  he  did  the  very  large  Protestant 
element  of  the  country,  and  in  addition  dis- 
pleasing the  veterans  of  the  civil  war.  The 
answer  to  this  will  be  that  those  who  by 
their  votes  expressed  their  objection  to 
Justice  White's  preferment  are  very  nar- 
row-minded and  bigoted  citizens.  Perhaps 
so;  yet  the  fact  remains  that  the  ap- 
pointment created  widespread  feeling  of  re- 
sentment, and  therefore  its  influence  in  the 
last  Presidential  campaign  was  very  great. 

For  this  reason  it  stands  against  Mr. 
Taft  as  the  leader  to  whom  the  interests  of 
162 


MORE  BAD  POLITICS 

the  party  had  been  entrusted.  The  inci- 
dent could  have  been  avoided  by  the  ap- 
pointment of  Justice  Harlan,  who  was  in 
line  for  the  place.  Public  sentiment,  par- 
ticularly party  sentiment,  was  on  the  side 
of  the  grand  old  American  jurist.  He  was, 
besides,  the  choice  of  a  great  many  eminent 
members  of  the  bar,  who  had  no  doubt  about 
his  qualifications. 

As  has  been  suggested,  it  is  not  Mr.  Taft 
alone  who  is  left  to  suffer  for  such  things; 
the  great  Republican  party  has  been  more 
than  equally  the  victim.  In  the  elevation 
of  Justice  White,  as  well  as  in  the  matter 
of  so-called  reciprocity,  Mr.  Taft  seems  to 
have  proceeded  without  any  thought  of  his 
party's  welfare.  When  he  became  the  Re- 
publican candidate  the  party  was  in  a  most 
prosperous  political  condition.  He  left  it 
in  a  situation  of  pitiable  helplessness,  from 
which  recovery  will  be  tediously  slow. 

Had  Roosevelt  and  Taft  conspired  to- 
gether for  the  overthrow  of  the  great  or- 
ganization which  gave  them  all  they  ever 
163 


THE  WRECK 

had  of  political  recognition,  they  could  not 
have  hit  upon  more  effective  methods  of  de- 
struction than  the  ones  that  each  of  these 
distinguished  men  saw  fit  to  adopt. 


164 


TAFT  AND  THE  TRUSTS 

IN  some  other  respects,  however,  Mr. 
Taft  rose  quite  to  the  heights  of  states- 
manship, and  his  analysis  of  some  im- 
portant court  decisions  and  their  applica- 
tion to  present  conditions  proves  his  very 
great  ability  as  a  lawyer. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  he  suc- 
ceeded to  the  duties  of  President  in  very 
trying  times.  As  has  been  so  often  said, 
Eoosevelt  was  a  hard  man  to  follow. 
Throughout  his  long  lease  of  power  he 
stirred  the  popular  imagination  until  it  be- 
came a  ferment  of  uncontrollable  passion. 
At  the  end  of  his  service  the  public  mind 
was  in  a  state  of  revolt, — Mexicanized  and 
vengeful. 

By  winking  at  criminal  infractions  of  the 
law,  Roosevelt  had  managed  not  only  to  in- 
crease the  country's  ills  but  to  leave  the  im- 
165 


THE  WRECK 

pression  that  they  were  due  to  the  corrupt 
practices  of  indefinite  persons  and  to  forces 
so  potent  that  he  had  been  unable  to  subdue 
them.  The  people  were  impatient  for  the 
realization  of  the  reforms  which  he  had  art- 
fully outlined  but  had  never  secured. 

When  Taft  came  in  the  courts  were 
gorged  with  suits  the  pleadings  of  which 
were  replete  with  doubtful  terms.  Among 
them  were  the  cases  against  the  Standard 
Oil  and  the  Tobacco  trusts.  An  examina- 
tion of  the  record  in  these  cases  raises  in 
the  mind  of  the  close  casuist  a  question 
of  doubt  as  to  the  entire  sincerity  of  their 
instigators.  They  were  the  product  of 
able  lawyers,  it  is  true;  yet,  after  reading 
Justice  Harlan's  dissenting  opinion,  one  is 
impressed  with  the  thought  that  here  and 
there  the  pleadings  were  lacking  in  vitality, 
whilst  in  other  parts  they  appeared  to  be 
packed  with  confusing  redundancy. 

However,  Mr.  Taft  had  nothing  to  do 
with  the  pleadings  nor  with  the  appeals. 
The  Government's  case  had  been  fully  made 
166 


TAFT  AND  THE  TRUSTS 

up  before  he  came  to  the  Presidency.  The 
future  attitude  toward  monopoly  was  now 
in  the  hands  of  the  Supreme  Court,  and  the 
administration  could  but  await  the  decision 
of  that  tribunal  in  the  Standard  and  To- 
bacco cases  before  proceeding  against  the 
Steel,  the  Harvester,  and  other  trusts. 

Mr.  Taf t  makes  this  fact  quite  clear  in  his 
message  of  December,  1911.  He  says: 

"In  May  last  the  Supreme  Court  handed  down  decisions 
in  the  suits  in  equity  brought  by  the  United  States  to  enjoin 
the  further  maintenance  of  the  Standard  Oil  trust  and  of 
the  American  Tobacco  trust,  and  to  secure  their  dissolution. 
The  decisions  are  epoch-making  and  serve  to  advise  the  busi- 
ness world  authoritatively  of  the  scope  and  operation  of  the 
anti-trust  act  of  1890.  The  decisions  do  not  depart  in  any 
substantial  way  from  the  previous  decisions  of  the  court  in 
construing  and  applying  this  important  statute,  but  they 
clarify  those  decisions  by  further  defining  the  already  admitted 
exceptions  to  the  literal  construction  of  the  act.  By  the  de- 
crees they  furnish  a  useful  precedent  as  to  the  proper  method 
of  dealing  with  the  capital  and  property  of  illegal  trusts." 

It  has  been  said  that  the  court  by  intro- 
ducing into  the  construction  of  the  statute 
common-law   distinctions   has   emasculated 
it.     Mr.  Taft  says  that  this  is  obviously  un- 
167 


THE  WRECK 

true,  for  "by  its  judgment  every  contract 
and  combination  in  restraint  of  interstate 
trade  ...  is  condemned  by  the  statute." 
He  goes  on  to  declare  that  "the  most  ex- 
treme critics  cannot  instance  a  case  that 
ought  to  be  condemned  under  the  statute 
which  is  not  brought  within  its  terms  as 
thus  construed."  He  emphasizes  his  views 
thus: 

"The  test  of  reasonableness  was  never  applied  by  the  court 
at  common  law  to  contracts  or  combinations  or  conspiracies 
in  restraint  of  trade  whose  purpose  was  or  whose  necessary 
effect  would  be  to  stifle  competition,  to  control  prices,  or  to 
establish  monopolies.  The  courts  never  assumed  power  to  say 
that  such  contracts  or  combinations  or  conspiracies  might  be 
lawful  if  the  parties  to  them  were  only  moderate  in  the  use 
of  the  power  thus  secured  and  did  not  exact  from  the  public 
too  great  and  exorbitant  prices.  It  is  true  that  many  theo- 
rists, and  others  engaged  in  business  violating  the  statute, 
have  hoped  that  some  such  line  could  be  drawn  by  courts; 
but  no  court  of  authority  has  ever  attempted  it.  Certainly 
there  is  nothing  in  the  decisions  of  the  latest  two  cases  from 
which  such  a  dangerous  theory  of  judicial  discretion  in  en- 
forcing this  statute  can  derive  the  slightest  sanction." 

So  that,  from  Mr.  Taft's  point  of  view, 
the  decisions  in  the  Standard  and  Tobacco 
cases  do  not  weaken  the  Sherman  law ;  they 
168 


TAFT  AND  THE  TEUSTS 

"clarify"  it.     This  brings  Mm  to  the  crim- 
inal sections  of  the  statute: 

"Only  in  the  last  three  or  four  years  has  the  heavy  hand 
of  the  law  been  laid  upon  the  great  illegal  combinations  that 
have  exercised  such  an  absolute  dominion  over  many  of  our 
industries.  Criminal  prosecutions  have  been  brought  and  a 
number  are  pending,  but  juries  have  felt  averse  to  convicting 
for  jail  sentences,  and  judges  have  been  most  reluctant  to 
impose  such  sentences  on  men  of  respectable  standing  in  so- 
ciety whose  offense  has  been  regarded  as  merely  statutory. 
Still,  as  the  offense  becomes  better  understood  and  the  com- 
mitting of  it  partakes  more  of  studied  and  deliberate  defiance 
of  the  law,  we  can  be  confident  that  juries  will  convict  indi- 
viduals and  that  jail  sentences  will  be  imposed." 

This  statement  is  very  significant.  It 
raises  the  question  of  moral  conduct  on  the 
part  of  judges  and  juries  and  holds  out  the 
hope  that  as  offenses  "  become  better  under- 
stood" "jail  sentences  will  be  imposed."  It 
also  admits  that  some  courts  "have  been 
most  reluctant"  to  impose  jail  sentences 
"on  men  of  respectable  standing  in  so- 
ciety." 

Thus  we  come  to  the  very  crux  of  the 
argument  made  by  Commissioner  Smith  in 
his  confidential  letter  to  President  Eoose- 
169 


THE  WRECK 

velt,  wherein  the  Commissioner,  a  subordi- 
nate executive  officer  of  the  Government,  as- 
sumed to  decide  beforehand  that  the  men 
who  had  organized  the  Steel  and  the  Har- 
vester trusts  were  not  guilty  of  criminal 
wrong-doing.  Doubtless  Mr.  Smith,  upon 
investigation,  had  found  them  to  be  "men 
of  respectable  standing  in  society,"  and  in 
this  view  he  appears  to  have  been  sustained 
by  President  Eoosevelt. 

The  number  of  criminal  prosecutions  be- 
gun and  the  number  of  indictments  found 
during  the  four  years  of  Taft  were  far  in 
excess  of  those  under  all  previous  admin- 
istrations. Many  of  these  cases  are  still 
pending,  and  several  hundred  thousand  dol- 
lars have  been  paid  in  fines  imposed  in  the 
discretion  of  the  court. 

On  the  whole  it  would  seem,  as  Mr.  Taft 
has  suggested,  that  in  recent  years  judees 
and  juries  are  coming  to  realize  that  the 
framers  of  the  Sherman  law  knew  what 
they  were  doing.  The  record  shows  that 
except  under  the  Roosevelt  administration 
170 


TAFT  AND  THE  TRUSTS 

no  violators  of  the  law  have  enjoyed  any 
undue  leniency  on  the  part  of  Government 
officials.  That  the  Morgan  interests  did 
find  a  friend  in  President  Roosevelt  admits 
of  no  kind  of  doubt.  That  these  interests 
turned  their  guns  on  President  Taft  when 
in  conformity  with  his  oath  of  office  he 
brought  suits  against  them  is  equally  true. 
In  summing  up,  Mr.  Taft  expresses  this 
very  clear  view  of  the  intent  and  purpose  of 
the  anti-trust  law : 

"The  complaint  is  made  of  the  statute  that  it  is  not  suf- 
ficiently definite  in  its  description  of  that  which  is  forbidden, 
to  enable  business  men  to  avoid  its  violation.  The  suggestion 
is  that  we  may  have  a  combination  of  two  corporations,  which 
may  run  on  for  years,  and  that  subsequently  the  Attorney 
General  may  conclude  that  it  was  a  violation  of  the  statute, 
and  that  which  was  supposed  by  the  combines  to  be  innocent 
then  turns  out  to  be  a  combination  in  violation  of  the  statute. 
The  answer  to  this  hypothetical  case  is  that  when  men  at- 
tempt to  amass  such  stupendous  capital  as  will  enable  them 
to  suppress  competition,  control  prices,  and  establish  a 
monopoly,  they  know  the  purpose  of  their  acts.  Men  do  not 
do  such  a  thing  without  having  it  clearly  in  mind." 

Manifestly  there  can  be  no  kind  of  doubt 
that  the  men  who  organized  the  Steel  Cor- 
171 


THE  WRECK 

poration  knew  "the  purpose  of  their  acts." 
The  purpose  was  to  "control  prices  and  es- 
tablish a  monopoly."  They  did  not  fully 
succeed  in  this  until  Roosevelt  suspended 
the  Sherman  law  and  permitted  them  to 
absorb  their  Tennessee  rival.  Since  then 
their  power  in  maintaining  prices  has  been 
omnipotent.  The  example  they  have  set  be- 
fore the  business  world  is  equally  reprehen- 
sible. 

George  W.  Perkins  knew  "the  purpose 
of  his  acts"  when  in  1902  he  persuaded  the 
McCormicks,  the  Deerings,  the  Lisners,  and 
other  independent  manufacturers  of  farm 
machinery  to  combine  and  establish  the 
Harvester  monopoly.  He  knew  "the  pur- 
pose of  his  acts"  when,  in  order  that  he 
might  evade  the  statutes  and  decisions  in 
regard  to  "manufacture"  and  "distribu- 
tion" by  one  and  the  same  corporation,  he 
organized  the  International  Harvester 
Company  "of  America"  to  sell  and  distrib- 
ute the  articles  manufactured  by  the  Inter- 
national Harvester  Company  of  New  Jer- 
172 


TAFT  AND  THE  TRUSTS 

sey.  The  two  corporations  were  organized 
and  are  still  controlled  by  identically  the 
same  men. 

This  is  the  same  Perkins  referred  to  in 
Herbert  Knox  Smith's  confidential  letter 
to  Roosevelt ;  the  same  Perkins  with  whom 
President  Roosevelt  directed  Mr.  Smith,  his 
Commissioner,  to  confer;  the  same  Perkins 
who  was  " going  to  fight"  if  the  Govern- 
ment disturbed  his  monopoly;  the  same  Per- 
kins who  did  fight  the  Taft  administration 
because  it  cited  him  and  other  Morgan  mo- 
nopolists to  court, — the  same  one  indeed 
who  is  now  financing  the  bull  moose  up- 
lift "in  the  interests  of  future  generations." 
Meanwhile  the  Harvester  monopoly  has 
driven  all  rivals  to  the  wall  and  paid  a  $20,- 
000,000  stock  dividend  in  this  generation; 
and  Perkins  is  still  fighting, — fighting  for 
the  kind  of  regulation  and  supervision  that 
Roosevelt  gave  him  from  1902  to  1909. 


173 


MR.  WILSON  AND  HIS  PARTY 

IT  is  too  early  to  venture  even  an  opinion 
concerning  President  Wilson's  admin- 
istration. It  will  be  judged  largely  by 
the  tariff  law  which  is  now  in  process  of 
making.  A  year  or  two  hence  we  shall  know 
more  about  it.  Notwithstanding  the  flood 
of  assertion  in  regard  to  the  dominance  of 
"progressivism"  in  the  Democratic  party 
as  at  present  constituted,  one  is  impressed 
with  the  close  resemblance  it  bears  to  the 
Democracy  of  other  days.  As  a  whole  it 
still  clings  to  the  revenue  theory  in  tariffs, 
while  not  a  few  of  its  members, — a  larger 
number  than  formerly, — lean  heavily  to- 
ward protection. 

Like  divisions  appear  to  prevail  in  regard 

to  the  currency  and  to  foreign  policy.     As 

to  that  other  disturbing  problem, — the  rule 

of  monopoly, — it  would  be  as  difficult  to 

174 


MR.  WILSON  AND  HIS  PARTY 

find  any  Democratic  member  of  either 
house  of  Congress  who  is  not  outspokenly 
against  the  trusts  as  to  pick  out  a  Repub- 
lican or  a  so-called  Progressive  who  is  not 
also  opposed  to  them.  Yet.  notwithstand- 
ing this  unanimity  of  feeling  on  the  sub- 
ject, no  one  has  come  forward  with  a  prac- 
tical remedy  for  the  country's  greatest  evil. 

The  legacy  left  by  Roosevelt,  who  blew 
both  hot  and  cold  on  the  trust  question, 
seems  to  be  accepted  as  an  unwelcome  be- 
quest by  an  overgenerous  philanthropist. 
It  will  be  a  courageous  statesman  indeed 
who  will  assume  responsibility  for  amend- 
ing the  Sherman  law,  and  a  fortunate  one 
who  succeeds  in  enforcing  it  to  the  letter. 

As  to  the  spirit  of  the  law, — with  the 
growth  of  monopoly  during  the  past  dozen 
years  and  the  blunted  sensibilities  of  the 
people  in  regard  to  it;  with  the  apathetic 
conditions  resulting  from  the  non-enforce- 
ment of  its  deterring  provisions  and  conse- 
quently the  aggressive  arrogance  of  the 
foremost  monopolists  themselves, — in  this 
175 


THE  WEECK 

sorry  situation  the  present  administration 
will  find  but  little  of  the  original  spirit  in 
it. 

Whether  a  way  can  be  found  to  revive  it, 
to  restore  the  teeth  so  dexterously  drawn  by 
Doctor  Eoosevelt,  is  a  task  that  will  tax  the 
ingenuity  of  Doctor  Wilson.  In  case  the 
administration  decides  that  the  anti-trust 
law  must  be  amended  in  order  to  make  it 
effective  the  striking  out  of  a  few  words  in 
each  of  its  three  first  sections  might  greatly 
simplify  matters. 

There  is  the  danger,  however,  that  even 
were  the  discretionary  clauses  in  regard  to 
fines  eliminated  it  would  be  necessary  to  re- 
construe  the  entire  statute,  and  this  means 
almost  endless  litigation.  Indeed  the  mo- 
nopolists themselves  are  believed  to  be  look- 
ing hopefully  forward  to  any  sort  of  amend- 
ment of  the  law.  It  would  be  worth  a  bil- 
lion dollars  a  year  to  them  if  it  could  be 
sent  back  to  the  courts,  for  the  trusts  know 
the  value  there  is  in  the  law's  delay. 

The  change  from  a  Republican  to  a 
176 


MR.  WILSON  AND  HIS  PARTY 

Democratic  regime  brought  an  interesting 
character  to  the  White  House.  Woodrow 
AVilson  has  already  demonstrated  that  he 
has  an  abundance  of  courage.  As  yet  not 
even  the  closest  students  of  politics  have 
been  able  to  decide  whether  it  is  the  right 
sort  of  courage.  It  is  not  the  militant 
brand  that  Roosevelt's  admirers  still  be- 
lieve that  he  possesses.  Therefore  it  is  not 
the  furious,  the  violent  kind.  Nor  is  it  of 
the  subdued  order. 

Mr.  Wilson  wears  the  air  of  one  having 
complete  confidence  in  himself.  He  is 
moved  by  a  quiet  energy,  an  alertness  that 
is  in  distinct  contrast  with  the  loggy  bearing 
of  Mr.  Taft.  True,  their  physical  propor- 
tions are  widely  dissimilar.  Again,  Mr. 
Taft 's  most  striking  feature  is  his  set  smile ; 
Mr.  Wilson  merely  looks  pleasant. 

The  pictures  of  him  do  not  do  him  jus- 
tice. The  intellectual,  almost  soulful,  light 
that  illumined  his  face  when  he  read  his 
tariff  address  to  Congress — it  was  not  a 
message — has  never  revealed  itself  to  the 
177 


THE  WRECK 

camera  at  special  sittings.  Should  it  hap- 
pen that  the  artist  who  is  to  paint  his 
portrait  for  the  White  House  gallery  shall 
be  fortunate  enough  to  catch  him  in  this 
mood,  instead  of  the  homely  man  portrayed 
in  the  newspapers  and  in  studio  windows 
Mr.  Wilson  will  take  rank  among  our  hand- 
somest Presidents. 

As  for  statesmanship  it  is  evident  that  he 
must  remain  a  psychological -study  for  some 
time  to  come.  A  hasty  estimate  of  his 
capacity  in  this  regard  cannot  be  made  with 
a  satisfactory  degree  of  accuracy.  A  well- 
known  journalist  who  came  on  to  attend  the 
inauguration  asked  a  member  of  the  press 
gallery : 

"  What  is  he  like  1" 

"He  is  not  like  anything  else  we  ever  had 
here,"  was  the  answer. 

"Is  he  steady  or  is  he  eccentric, — hyster- 
ical or  phlegmatic,  arbitrary,  dictatorial,  or 
calm  and  yielding?"  urged  the  anxious  and 
curious  visitor. 

"He's  all  of  them  in  one,  but  I  am  at  a 
178 


MR.  WILSON  AND  HIS  PARTY 

loss  to  find  a  name  for  it,"  replied  the  gal- 
lery scribe. 

When  an  experienced  newspaper  man 
fails  to  classify  a  new  President  the  case 
is  almost  hopeless.  Eventually  no  doubt  it 
will  be  found  that  Woodrow  Wilson  has  a 
normal  temperament;  that  he  is  the  com- 
plete master  of  self,  studiously  honest,  ex- 
ceptionally methodical,  and  that  he  is  in  no 
danger  of  being  spoiled  by  the  adulatory 
arts  usually  exercised  toward  the  man  in  the 
White  House. 

It  is  already  quite  definitely  settled  that 
he  is  a  gentleman  and  a  scholar,  and  that 
he  is  to  maintain  his  position  on  a  plane  of 
respectful  dignity  in  keeping  with  the 
serious  business  of  government.  He  gave 
a  suggestive  hint  in  this  direction  in  his  in- 
troductory remarks  on  the  8th  of  April 
when  he  broke  a  precedent  of  more  than  one 
hundred  years'  standing  and  went  to  the 
Capitol  to  deliver  his  tariff  address  in  per- 
son. He  said: 


179 


THE  WRECK 

"Mr.  Speaker,  Mr.  President,  Gentlemen  of  the  Congress: 
I  am  very  glad  indeed  to  have  this  opportunity  of  addressing 
the  two  houses  directly,  and  thereby  verifying  for  myself  the 
impression  that  the  President  of  the  United  States  is  a  person, 
and  not  a  mere  department  of  the  Government,  hailing  Con- 
gress from  some  isolated  island  of  jealous  authority,  sending 
messages  instead  of  speaking  with  his  own  natural  voice;  in 
short,  that  he  is  a  human  being,  trying  to  cooperate  with 
other  human  beings  in  a  common  service.  Hereafter,  after 
enjoying  this  pleasure  and  privilege,  I  shall  feel  absolutely 
normal  in  all  our  dealings  with  one  another." 

The  neatness  and  simplicity  of  this  state- 
ment won  the  admiration  of  the  thousands 
who  had  gathered  in  the  chamber  and  in 
the  galleries  of  the  House  to  witness  the 
unusual  proceeding.  More  than  this,  in  a 
measure  it  explained  the  reason  of  the 
Democratic  party  in  having  selected  Mr. 
Wilson  as  its  candidate.  To  use  a  phrase 
of  his,  it  is  quite  evident  he  does  not  think 
that  "life  consists  in  eternally  running  to 
a  fire." 

In  the  matter  of  policies,  however,  at  the 
very  outset  the  President  has  assumed  a 
most  difficult  task.  He  is  to  be  commended 
for  advising  with  his  party  leaders  on  the 
tariff.  Being  an  apt  student,  he  will  learn 
180 


MR.  WILSON  AND  HIS  PARTY 

a  great  deal.  He  will  find  that  the  tariff 
question  does  not  belong  in  the  category  of 
the  exact  sciences.  The  tariff  has  been  the 
cause  of  the  undoing  of  many  great  men, 
and  if  Mr.  Wilson  escapes  this  fate  he  will 
be  very  much  more  fortunate  than  any  of 
his  predecessors.  He  must  know  even  now 
that  he  cannot  escape,  and  for  this  reason 
he  should  be  given  credit  for  having  that  pe- 
culiar courage  which  enables  him  to  take, 
along  with  his  party  associates,  his  full 
share  of  responsibility. 

He  is  too  wise  even  to  hope  that  his  party 
will  succeed  in  making  an  absolutely  just 
tariff  law.  In  the  present  state  of  society 
such  a  thing  is  impossible.  Strangely 
enough,  neither  of  the  existing  political 
organizations  stands  for  a  just  tariff. 
Exact  justice  in  tariff  matters  is  surely  to 
be  found  somewhere  between  the  line  of 
Republican  policy  and  the  line  of  Demo- 
cratic policy. 

On  the  part  of  the  Republicans  the  mak- 
ing of  tariff  laws  has  been  a  matter  of 
181 


THE  WRECK 

barter  and  trade,  one  section  of  interests 
yielding  to  another  section  of  interests, 
until,  as  Mr.  Wilson  said  in  his  address, 
"we  long  ago  passed  beyond  the  modest 
notion  of  protecting  the  industries  of  the 
country  and  moved  boldly  forward  to  the 
idea  that  they  were  entitled  to  the  direct 
patronage  of  the  Government. " 

On  the  other  hand  the  Democrats,  whose 
political  necessities  have  seldom  met  with 
financial  encouragement  from  the  protected 
industries,  have  felt  that  expediency  re- 
quired them  to  resort  to  oratorical  violence 
in  denouncing  the  "iniquitous  institution." 
The  result  is  that  the  two  parties  have 
gotten  themselves  farther  and  farther 
apart  on  the  tariff  question,  each  recogniz- 
ing all  along  that  it  was  on  unstable  ground. 

It  must  be  that  Mr.  Wilson  had  this  sit- 
uation in  mind  during  the  last  campaign 
when  he  said  repeatedly  that  "the  Govern- 
ment's fiscal  system  cannot  be  materially 
changed."  Under  all  these  circumstances, 
if  it  were  possible  for  him  to  bring  about  a 
182 


MR.  WILSON  AND  HIS  PAETY 

compromise  tariff, — a  just  tariff, — he  would 
write  Ms  name  far  up  on  the  scroll  of  fame. 

But  alas !  such  a  thing  is  impossible,  even 
if  Mr.  Wilson  favored  it, — which  may  be 
doubted,  judging  from  recent  daily  press 
reports.  It  is  impossible  because  the  House 
leaders  have  decided  to  stick  to  the  old 
Democratic  text  of  "a  tariff  for  revenue 
only,"  although  they  must  know  that  the 
country  will  reject  such  a  tariff  at  the  very 
first  opportunity. 

A  factional  disagreement  in  the  Demo- 
cratic party,  the  outgrowth  of  pique  and 
thwarted  ambition,  seems  as  difficult  of  ad- 
justment as  a  household  disturbance  in 
which  the  opposing  forces  are  mutually 
hopeful  that  some  good  neighbor  will  drop 
in  and  play  the  part  of  pacificator.  Woe, 
then,  to  the  pacificator! 

This  being  the  case,  the  time  has  come  to 
write  " finis"  to  this  story,  lest  its  author 
be  mistaken  for  the  good  neighbor  with 
pacificatory  intentions.  The  President 
saved  himself  much  immediate  trouble  in 
183 


THE  WRECK 

this  respect  by  delegating  to  his  cabinet 
ministers  the  selection  of  their  subordinates, 
holding  the  head  of  each  department  re- 
sponsible for  its  administration.  Time  will 
tell  whether  he  is  yet  to  regret  his  course 
in  this  regard. 

As  suggested  in  an  earlier  chapter,  the 
predatory  interests  have  their  experts 
whose  particular  business  it  is  to  prey  upon 
the  Government  through  pliant  officials. 
No  matter  what  party  is  in  power  the 
"pull"  is  always  the  thing.  This  is  the  in- 
visible government  concerning  which  the 
general  public  have  little  knowledge.  It 
works  secretly,  and  we  do  not  know  of  the 
full  scope  of  its  operations  until  it  is  too 
late,  or  until  we  read  that  the  superservice- 
able  officials,  at  the  end  of  their  term,  have 
gone  to  New  York  and  taken  places  there 
or  elsewhere  with  the  trusts  at  princely 
salaries. 

The  Treasury  Department  in  Washing- 
ton is  always  the  object  of  trust  solicitude; 
and  it  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  no  Treasury 
184 


MR.  WILSON  AND  HIS  PARTY 

administration  in  this  generation,  unless  it 
was  Mr.  Taft's,  has  been  free  from  Wall 
Street  or  corporate  connections.  Not  even 
Mr.  Wilson's  has  escaped,  new  as  it  is. 

It  was  the  hope  of  many  sincere  friends 
of  Mr.  Wilson  that  he  would  avoid  this 
awkward  complication  by  going  far  away 
from  Manhattan  Island  for  his  Secretary 
of  the  Treasury.  But  he  did  not  do  so. 
Mr.  McAdoo  may  turn  out  to  be  an  excep- 
tion. However,  his  environment  for  many 
years  back  is  against  him.  Environment  is 
a  potent  force.  Almost  the  first  act  of  Sec- 
retary McAdoo  was  to  choose  his  assistant 
secretary  from  corporation  circles.  John 
Skelton  Williams  is  a  member  of  the  Mil- 
lionaires' Club,  the  president  of  a  railway 
company,  of  two  banks,  and  a  leading  fi- 
nancial light  generally  in  the  mysterious 
Interlocking  System  whose  control  extends 
to  every  line  of  industry  worth  while. 

Do  the  necessities  of  the  Treasury  De- 
partment really  demand  the  services  of  this 
particular  Mr.  Williams?  Or  is  this  kind 
185 


THE  WRECK 

of  thing  "the  new  freedom"  we've  been 
reading  about  ?  If  so  it  may  not  be  a  great 
while  before  we  shall  need  a  new  broom. 
It  is  here,  perhaps,  that  President  Wilson 's 
fine  courage  will  show  itself.  Should  it 
turn  out  that  mistakes  have  been  made  in 
organizing  the  Treasury  or  any  other  De- 
partment the  country  will  expect  Mr.  Wil- 
son to  correct  them. 

Still,  it  is  a  most  difficult  matter  to  meas- 
ure the  forces  of  endurance  in  the  Demo- 
cratic party.  It  would  seem  to  thrive  best 
on  blunders.  Wrecks  are  only  a  tonic  to  it. 
If  anything  could  put  an  end  to  its  exist- 
ence possibly  it  would  be  too  much  reform. 
After  all,  Mr.  Wilson  may  be  a  far-seeing 
man.  He  may  realize  that  future  party 
success  depends  not  so  much  upon  the  pro- 
gressiveness  loudly  proclaimed  during  the 
campaign  as  upon  the  more  substantial 
things  that  give  politics  its  effective  punch. 
We  shall  see. 


186 


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